Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to you all! I hope everyone had a joyful and relaxing Christmas and New Year break.  I've been very lucky and had an extra long break which I spent back in Scotland seeing family and friends.  It was a great break and now I have the excitement of a new job starting tomorrow as a project archivist at London School of Economics! The project is titled The economist and the wider world: the papers of Lionel Robbins (1898-1984) and I'm really excited about getting started.  As it will be my first week though I doubt whether I'll have much time to blog so I thought I'd just say hello tonight.

I've been loving reading all the responses to Gillian's Top 5 reflections series but I haven't really made enough to participate properly as I've only made 7 items in total this year.   However I've actually got a lot of wear out of most of them so far and I feel I've learnt a lot so I'm happy with the progress I've made.  The most recent dress (still unblogged) has only had one outing so far - the wedding I made it for - but I'm sure I'll wear it a lot in the future.  The 'toile' I made has become a favourite - worn with a belt and a bright cardigan it's perfect for work. 

One bit of the Top 5 Reflections I can complete is the Top 5 Lessons Learned:

1. I have a lot, a lot, to learn about sewing!
2. I'm a slow sewer and often can't find the energy to sew after work - I'm going to try and use the 15 minute idea discussed by Tilly for those evenings when I'm home but feeling too tired to sew as it makes it much less daunting.
3. Making toile's from fabric I'm not going to wear is pretty demotivating.  I just discovered this as it's taken over a month to make up a toile from my skirt block using the same fabric as my dress toile. Somehow a grey skirt as well as a grey dress wasn't too appealing. Time to be brave and just cut into nicer fabric first time round.
4. Sewing friends are amazing! I'm very lucky to have a 'real life' sewing friend and couldn't have learned so much this year without her help.  Like so many other sewers who blog I've been amazed by the support and help I've received from the online sewing community. I hope one day to be able to reciprocate!
5. I love wearing things that I've sewn!

My final make of 2012? A baby blanket made using Handmade Jane's tutorial and stealing the idea of the initial from Kestrel Finds and Makes.  I used a scrap of yellow striped fabric for the initial and then chain stitched round the edge of it with embroidery thread.

I couldn't share this before as I didn't want to spoil the surprise for the receiver, well the mum of the receiver as this was a present for our new two-week old nephew Adam (I don't think he reads my blog - yet!).  It was so much fun to make and I enjoyed relearning the embroidery chain stitch as I hadn't done it for years.  The fleece fabric was a gift from a friend and the other fabric is a lovely soft linen/cotton blend I got from M is for Make (they still have it and it's in the sale now)