One thing I have always done with this blog is to limit it, to only talk about work, or things that closely resemble work. This year I’d like to share more than just work. I want to share personal projects, personal discoveries and dreams, and to not just limit the blog to things I make for sale.

My reason behind this is that every experience we have shapes who we are, and the things that we create. By only sharing work, I’m forcing myself to work inside such a rigid framework that it can be very hard to break out of – and I end up sharing nothing at all. Some of the things that shape my work never have their story told, and I’d like to share them.

Anyone who follows me on instagram knows that I am a huge knitter. I love it. Being able to knit has opened up a whole new world of fashion for me. The action of knitting, the patterns, the yarn have all combined to give me a new appreciation of clothing, fibres, textiles; and I’ve also gained new viewpoints on what fashion is, what sustainability is, and how this speaks to the environment. It’s changed my wider outlook on society as a whole, and has made me consider things like the economics of the wool industry, China, India, wages, animal rights, and the list goes on.

I also sew (obviously!), and I really love making my own clothes. There’s so much I don’t know, but I’d like to share those personal projects here as well. I don’t intend on ever designing or selling my own line of clothes, I’m just a dabbler, and I like well made simple outfits – stuff I rarely find at the shops. I also like to think about where my clothes came from – were the workers paid sufficiently? Do they have to work 12 hours a day to feed their family? Is the dye house taking environmental precautions? Where was it made? Do children work in the factory – etc. It seems much easier to circumnavigate these issues if i make as much as I can myself.

Gardening. As an adult I have been wanting to grow my own food for awhile – but as a renter I put it off. Whenever I began a garden we would inevitably end up having to move, and the loss was always such a downer that I vowed to not do it again until we owned our own home. Last October we found out that our landlords are quite happy living overseas thanks very much and don’t intend on moving back for at least a few more years – so we have some sort of permanence before we can buy something permanent!

So I started a garden. And I LOVE it. I’d go so far as to say it has become an obsession. It began as one garden bed (albeit a large one), and has grown in size and now encompasses 4 more raised beds, and 4 more garden beds. Yikes! It’s producing lots of veggies, and i think we will have more than we can eat. I hope to store some of it for over the winter, I need to learn about root cellars. So prepare yourselves to see my love of all things plant.

These are just some of the things I hope to share more of in 2016. I’m already dubbing this year “the year of personal projects”. I really plan on focusing a lot of energy making things for the joy of it, hopefully at a ratio of “one for me, one for you.”

I’ve always been fascinated with quilts. There is something about the repetitive nature of quilt design that just makes me happy, and for me, quilting was the starting point of everything I know about sewing.

I first tried sewing when I began high school. My school prescribed to some weird gender based division of classes for year 7 and the girls did home economics and sewing, and the boys did woodwork and metalwork. Then after 2 terms we switched. It was pretty terrible as I recall, and I truly HATED being made to do cooking and sewing. I was a total tomboy and i was incredibly aggravated that I had to go and do “girly” things.

Fast forward to now and i love both of those things,  how times have changed!

In 2008 I decided the time was ripe for me to make my first quilt. Before i lashed out and bought myself a sewing machine, I borrowed an old janome from my friend Sarah and set about sewing together a cot quilt for the child I hoped to one day have.

By the time I reached the quilting stage I realised I already wanted to do another, so I handed Sarah back her sewing machine and bought myself the cheapest one I could lower the feed dogs on and embarked on my freehand quilting journey. It lasted all the way through a total of 4 quilts, and by the last one I was massively pregnant. So that was the end of that!

I kept up with my sewing though, trying out many things, and I am ever thankful to quilting. It taught me to sew a straight line, that is for sure.

Over the last few months I have returned to quilt making. It’s a good feeling to make something so substantial and invest a lot of myself into, and I’m looking forward to making many more. I’ve got lots of designs stuck in my head that I need to create. They’ll all take time, but as the saying goes “anything worth doing, is worth doing properly.”

But, I am very sick of looking like an unfashionable hobo, so I need some new stuff. To start off with, I need new tops. If you looked in my drawer right now, you would find about 5 (old) black t shirts and 2 shirts. Plus these, which I made, and are so much more wonderful than everything else I have!!

Modeled by “two” my lovely dress form. The fabric is an Anna Maria Horner voile. The scarf is my “Maria” scarf. It looks fabulous with everything.

This next one you will have seen if you are an instagram follower, It’s indigo dyed silk cotton blend voile. And is actually lined with white silk/cotton voile because it’s a bit too see through on its own. Lovely and soft to wear! I am going to be dyeing some more of this for some solid colour tops and possibly an Itajime one too. This one is shown with “Carmel”.

The pattern is a dress pattern by Pattern Runway, which i just adapted a bit to fit my style. I’ve actually never made the dress from it, just a top!

Soon I plan on tackling a pair of jeans. Which I may overdye…