You know when you’ve had one of those No sewjo sojourns where you just keep hiding from the stash, the WIPs, UFOs and your ‘To Make’ list. Well, that’s where I’m at right now. A few months back I smugly congratulated myself on tidying my stash, organising and ranking my WIPs, actually finishing some UFOs and thinking I had got on top of this sewing lark. I made lists, I think I even restarted a kind of journal. Then I had a bit of a crash and burn session. Nothing I worked on seemed to work out. All of my sewing tasks, be it personal or the many promises for other people, were all in some way flopping. I kept making mistakes, having misunderstandings and generally messing up to the point where the last thing I wanted to do was sew. Rather than being in control I now have a frightening amount of sewing glaring at me and wanting my attention. I skipped the challenges and stopped taking on review projects because letting people down really upsets me.

I’m trying to get back on the horse because here we are at the end of May (I didn’t participate in MMM18) and I have barely made anything this year. I want to get my stride back not just because I committed myself to #2018makenine but because I have managed to stick to both my stash diet (mostly) and my RTW diet and I actually find I am short of things I want to wear. I was going to write short of things to wear but that’s just a blatant lie!

One of my issues apart from my sewing fail fest, has been prioritising. I want to learn to draft my own patterns so I don’t have to buy more. That takes time. Part of this plan involves making a custom fit dressform as I want to learn to drape as well that will take more time. I even bought a pattern but decided I don’t have the skills to grade it up from a size 8. I’m seriously contemplating the Bootstrap Fashion custom dress form (or bodging my own) and I’ve been following a fellow IGer @acraftteacuppa as she made up her brilliant version.  Both of these points highlight another major problem. I’m hella strapped for cash! I don’t want to spend money on my sewing as I already have too much tied up in unused materials and equipment and I feel strongly that I shouldn’t spend more until I have used some of the gear I have already.

So how to fulfil my goals this year? I have one sewing community challenge which I really want to participate in, so that is my number one priority. My SMYLY moment last year was participating in #sewtogetherforsummer and I was really pleased that this year’s challenge is something on my #2018makenine list. I had planned to make a wrap dress and I want to draft it myself, thus fulfilling two goals. So I have spent a good amount of time making slopers/blocks for a wrap dress. I have chosen a toile fabric as well as my final material and it is underway. I’m feeling very nervous for some reason but I am pointing in the right direction.

So no more pity party, I’m back in the game. Watch this space.