Happy Wednesday! I'm excited to share my goals for 2017 today.
2017 shall be another year of making do and working from my stash.
I really enjoyed the challenge I set myself last year: Use up more
fabric than I bring in. It was hard in the beginning of the year, but
got easier as the year went on. It became a game, how to use up yardage.
It helped me complete a lot more projects, and was fun too! I
was also more intentional about what yardage I did bring in. I kept
myself accountable by tracking everything, read more about my tracking methods here.
I want to continue to sew with special fabrics that I've hoarded over the years. I made two quilts with my Nani Iro fabric stash last year, and I am so glad I can enjoy these fabrics everyday! I also started a long-term quilt project with my Liberty Tana Lawn stash, which I want to keep working on.
This year is potentially going to be a big one for us. Michael is working towards finishing his Phd, including getting a paper ready for publication, preparing for his defense, applying for post-doctoral positions and then moving on to a new city. We're already feeling the weight of it, so I'm aiming for another low-stress year. On the business side, I'd like to release a few patterns, but otherwise I'm keeping my commitments to a minimum. Here's to another year of happy sewing!
Without further ado, here are my crafty goals for 2017:
- Sew/knit with more yardage than I buy. I'll be continuing to track my yardage each month again to help stay on target.
- Make sewing/knitting a daily habit. In January, I'm planning to knit for at least 15 minutes per day. I am hoping to do the same with sewing in February.
- Track my works in progress (WIPs), and end the year with fewer than I started with. I currently have 44 sewing/quilting, 5 knitting and 1 weaving.
- Make two Liberty churn dash blocks per month or a total of 24 this year.
- Build up a small stash of baby quilts, ready for gifting. Aiming for 4-5.
- Work on projects made exclusively from scraps.
- Make a quilt from my vintage sheet stash, I'm thinking a pineapple logcabin quilt!
- Finish my double wedding ring quilt. 56 wedges to go.
- Finish my indigo hand-dyed quilt. The top is already pieced.
- Finish up lingering quilt tops. Currently 6 tops waiting to be quilted.
- Continue to sew garments that I'll actually wear. Specific patterns I'd like to try for the first time this year: Beatrix Top, Derby Dress, Kelly Anorak, knit t-shirt (either Lark, Union St. tee, Plantain, or Hemlock), and the Hudson Pants.
- Knit 1600 yards of sock or sport weight yarns.
- Knit 1000 yards of DK or worsted weight yarns.
- Finish my Drachenfels shawl.
- Finish my Sunset weaving project.
- Knit a brioche project: Briochealicious or Sizzle Pop. Or both!
- Knit another sweater or destash my sweater quantities of yarn. (Bit of an ultimatum for myself!)
I'm looking forward to getting on with my list. I am still trying to catch up from having a cold last week, so I feel a bit behind already. I need to get sewing! I'll continue to do monthly reports this year to document my goal progress. See last year's monthly reports here. See last year's goals here.
Jeni, that is a great list of goals. Can hardly wait to see how your destashing shows up in beautiful pieces this year.
ReplyDeleteI love this Jeni! Such an awesome list! And I'm already sad thinking of you leaving. :(
ReplyDeleteYou are so organized. Good luck with the big year of changes ahead.
ReplyDeleteThis is a great list of goals! I really like your idea of having some baby quilts made up in advance, I should do that too rather than gifting them 6/8 months late!
ReplyDeleteWow, you have a lot of UFOs! I am working on mine too but I think that you have more. I need to be careful with my purchases too- it seems that not being able to find fabric and tools due to ' overload' is not very enjoyable. Good luck and thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteI said UFOs in my comment. I meant WIPs. Oops, sorry.
ReplyDeleteGreat goals. 15 minutes per day is a realistic action to help you reach them.
ReplyDeleteI just had to look up a delicious bread combined with knitting! These do indeed look yummy. Can't wait to see what you bake up :)
ReplyDeleteWow, you have 44 WIPs? That is really interesting to me. Are some of them projects that fizzled out midway or weren't working for some reason, or are all of these things that you're still excited about and looking forward to working on and finishing? I wish you all the best with your goals. Creating a stash of baby quilts ready to gift is on my wanna-do list, too, but I find myself playing catchup and finishing the baby shower quilt sometime around the baby's first birthday more often than not!
ReplyDeleteHonestly, almost half of those are leftover blocks, or groups of half-square triangle units from writing my book! I am counting groups of blocks as a WIP even though I have no plans for them yet. Just a way to motivate myself to do something with them! :)
DeleteHi, can you tell me how you define a quilt WIP? What if you bought fabric but haven't started cutting or sewing? At what point does it become a WIP?:) Thanks!!
ReplyDeleteIt's a personal preference for sure. I consider groups of blocks or oftentimes even leftover units from a project to be a "WIP" for me. Once I start cutting I feel it's a WIP. But it's totally up to you!
DeleteOk! I have a lot of fabric paired with patterns and sometimes I change my mind and use that fabric for something else so I wasn't calling those WIPS but wondered about your definition. Thanks for the inspiration! I'm going to start my own lists and goals which I am hoping will make me feel a bit less out of control!:):)
DeleteJeni, every single thing you make is lovely
ReplyDeleteI am looking forward to another great year getting inspired by your creativity and general adorableness
I'd like to hear more about your Liberty project. I have a stash of Liberty that I'm not sure what to do with yet and would like some ideas from "like minded individuals." Thanks. ljbisme at msn dot com
ReplyDeleteI'm making churn dash blocks with it! The blocks are part of a project in the book Quilting Happiness.
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