The sea of seven colors (and Simplicity 1887)

I'm a beach girl. Always have been.  I was lucky to grow up in a family that vacationed regularly.  Not anything fancy; we always drove, and it was pretty common that all seven of us would squeeze into one hotel room.  But we got to vacation, nonetheless.  For a period of my young life, we would alternate our summer destinations - one year by the sea, the next up in the mountains. At some point I convinced my siblings to make a full court press, begging for beach vacations only.  We were successful at some point in my junior high school life, and I've been going to the Outer Banks (on the Atlantic Ocean) almost every year ever since.

Gelato on vacation

We went on vacation, which meant that I got that have-to-sew-something-new-for-vacation itch. And it just wouldn't sit there and not be scratched.

December 2018

December began without much hope of sewing. As I keep saying, I've had trouble carving out that time for myself.  I think that part of it, to be honest, was feeling a bit blah on living in this huge, crowded, polluted city. The weather was particularly awful in November and the first half of December - overcast and smoggy with very little sun.

I attempted to  jumpstart my sew-jo with a tiny project.  We had a Girl Scout campout in mid-December, and bandanas were on the packing list.  I used to have a drawer full of bandanas, but it turns out that only one survived my ruthless pre-move purge - I forgot about the fact that maybe my kids would need bandanas at some point too.  Hoping that it would jumpstart my sew-jo, I decided to make a couple the day before the campout.

2019 Sewing Goals

I wasn't planning to make a sewing goals post this year.  I actually wasn't really planning to make any sewing goals, since my time at the machines has been so limited.  But while browsing Bloglovin' this evening, I was energized and motivate to lay out some priorities and plans for the next twelve months.  I think this may actually help me to maximize the sewing time that I do have, since I won't be floundering around wondering what to do.

Top 5 Hits of 2018

Though the move to South America hampered my sewing production somewhat, I think what I did make was fairly successful.  2018 was, in particular, the year of the dress for me. Counting my pinafores, I made seven dresses this year, and three of them are in my top 5.

Top 5 Misses of 2018

My 2018 sewing wasn't particularly interesting, but I ended up with a lot of pieces that got a lot of wear.  Choosing my top 5 misses was relatively easy, then, as a few things I made just didn't get worn very much.