New Projects For The New Year!

First, let me start by saying Happy New Year to all of you! I took some time to enjoy the holidays and relax a bit, and now I’m ready to get back to sewing, blogging, and vlogging. I have some new projects for the new year that I want to share. And I have thought about my goals for what I want to achieve this year.

Review

In 2021 I made 45 garments! That is a LOT for me. I have never had a year where I made more than about 20. The majority of these things were tops (19). The next largest group was pants (8). My goal is not to hit a specific number, but to sew more and improve my skills. That is always a goal of mine.

Goals

As far as new projects for the new year, one of the things I want to focus on is making the “guts” of the garments (the inside) look almost as good as the outside. It won’t happen every time, but I do want to be more aware.

Because I always want to challenge myself, I believe the best way to achieve that is to just keep sewing.

There may be some more artistic challenges as well. For example, fabric dyeing is on my list, but I don’t have the supplies to do that yet.

And because I’m sewing more, I will do more wardrobe building/planning. It’s important to wear what I make.

Quick Projects

I always like to start the year off with some quick projects. I have completed two “Minerva makes” projects. The first are these cargo pants using New Look 6055 made from a polyester twill fabric. You can read that post here.

Next is the soft and comfy striped knit turtleneck that I made using Wardrobe By Me Trudy Turtleneck pattern. That post is on the Minerva site as well. The black pants are from a Simplicity pattern I made a while ago.

Very Quick Project

This past weekend, I made these satin pillowcases. I have made these in a variety of colors and have even given them as gifts on occasion. Using a walking foot makes these come together very easily.

That’s it for now. Happy New Year and I’ll be back soon with more projects!

Changing Up RTW and Wardrobe Planning

Lately I’ve been planning on (or at least thinking about) what I want for the upcoming Fall/Autumn season. summer sewing is now complete. Not all the things I wanted to make got done, but I’m ok with that. Several tops did get made this season. So this post is about how I’m changing up some RTW and how I’m wardrobe planning.

Plans

Now I want to focus on making some pants. One pattern that I’m about to start is this one from Seamwork (you can sign up for the online magazine using my link, if you like).

These are a tapered pant which is a little different style for me. But I’ve already gotten the PDF put together, so now it’s time to make the mock-up and take it from there.

I’ll decide on some other types/styles of pants as time goes on. And I really want to make a classic black dress.

Changing up RTW pjs

As for changing up some ready-to-wear (RTW), I made some changes to some short pjs I bought from the Nordstrom anniversary sale.

Here is the original I bought:

Because they were so short , but so comfortable, I wanted to keep them. I needed to make them a bit longer for my own comfort level. So, I added about a 4″ insert into the shorts. Here’s what I did:

I cut the bottom hem/band off of each leg with a bit of seam allowance (1/2″)
I cut 4-4″ strips of the fabric I wanted insert
Using a narrow seam allowance, I attached those to each leg
I had to “remake” the crotch because the shorts were so short, there wasn’t much room
Then I reattached the bottom hem

The original shorts are knit fabric. The insert is a woven fabric.

Here is the result:

Now I have a truly unique pair of pajamas! And they fit the way I want. Sometimes we have to use our sewing powers to make RTW fit the way we want! 😂 ✂️

You can keep this process in mind to change up something you might have in your own closets.

Until next time…

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