The new year always makes me want to clean out junk drawers and closets, make a new reading list, and sew something for someone.

So, I cleaned a little, finished a great book (or two.  or three.  reading is so much more fun than exercising when it’s cold outside.  especially when your bed is outfitted with an electric blanket), and got out the patterns.

Spring is coming (someday!) and it’s hard to resist those little baby sundresses.

There’s something I want to practice this year:  sewing clothes for myself.  Clarification:  sewing clothes that I want to wear in public.   I’ve admired the Wiksten Tova shirt for a long time (some examples here), and after a lot of hemming and hawing around, I broke out the muslin and made myself a shirt.

(sorry about the dark picture. )

Then I extended the bottom of the shirt, and made myself a dress.  And they both turned out pretty great.

Then I remember how much I liked the Collette Violet shirt (from this post), so I tried it again, this time with longer sleeves. After much agonizing over the sleeves, I ripped them out and completely altered them from the pattern.

Sometimes I like to make piles of fabric and just look at them, together.

Here are some things I made for Christmas gifts.

A quilt for my niece.

A wall hanging for my mom.  (Not sure why the corner is turned up like that. ?)  This was just one single quilt block, but it’s kind of a challenging pattern so it’s fun to practice it one square at a time.  Someday I would love to make an entire quilt of these blocks.  Maybe in different prints of white?

Some appliqueing for my big girls, to freshen up some plain tshirts.