By Brienne

Vintage May

Hi there, thanks for being here! I'm joining the Vintage May tour today alongside A Jennuine Life . 

My early kids clothes were all made from recycled fabrics from the thrift shop. For awhile, I was making some cool stuff out of the gift bags that Patagonia makes from their mill ends.They're super cheap and they're lined. A couple of bags actually adds up to a fair amount of yardage, plus the prints are to die for! 

These days, I still make most of my kids' clothes and I still do a fair amount of upcycling but nothing like I used to. Vintage May feels like an effort to put the soul back into the sewing and I loved having the opportunity to make the old new again. 

This is the Marina Romper from Cali Faye. The drape of this good stuff from Cotton and Steel was the perfect match for the over-the-top flounce of this leggy romper.

The thing was MADE to be bounced in:)

Or to scowl in?

The romper was easy to construct for someone with a little bit of experience. The toughest part of the process was actually finding room to cut out the wide legs. The pattern is written simply with no cutting diagram or finishing instructions.

These days I can't be sure that what I make will be worn so I have to do it for the joy of it. And this was truly a joyful make. 

What do you make for the love of it?

Be sure to check out Kristin's tutorial for a Hudson Bay Quilt - too cool! Thanks for having me Kristin and Jess!

Embarking on a Year of Making

Committing to one whole year of making sounds like a lot. And in some ways, it is. But aren't we already doing it? I first heard about this campaign on Instagram from Meighan O'Toole. I realized that I'm already making every day, year-round. And comprehensive reflection doesn't come easily to me. I've been steadily working on my sewing and knitting. I loved the idea of having a concrete place to document it. On Instagram, I can share my progress with other makers, plus I'll have a visual record of everything that I made this year. It's going to be bananas. 

The pictures here are from the past week. They include some of what I made for my first stretch of the year of making. As you can see from the photos, some days may include finished objects but other days will include beginnings and techniques in progress.

Some of my year of making goals are lofty (like knitting a couple a sweaters and making a couple a quilts) and others are more pedestrian. For example, my daughter is way into having french braids in her hair but I never learned how to french braid - so I'm trying to learn now. That'll be part of my making. Below is the freshly made back for my Bellows-sweater-in-progress. If you'd like to see one of these beauties completed, do check out Jen from Grainline Studio's (AMAZING!!!).

 There are a lot of things that I'd like to try. I badly want to practice printing on fabric. I want to learn to do fair isle knitting. I want to make new designs for my Etsy shop. I want to make patterns for my clothing from ready-to-wear items. I want to make videos. And the list goes on... I hope that I can organize the list and make it more workable but I'm not holding my breath. As I've mentioned, I'm not much of a list-maker. Long terms planning doesn't come easily to me. But focusing my attention once daily on what I'm making, so far feels very good. I expect setbacks. I hope that there will be long summer days where my sewing machine, camera and Iphone are well out of reach. In the meantime, though, I'll be making. Some of it will be for fun, some of it will be for sale and it'll all be over here. 

Won't you join me? There's no hard and fast beginning and end date - that's up to. Make you something, throw the hastag #yearofmaking on it and join the party. It's never to late to begin:)

I'll be joining Frontier Dreams this week over here:)

Joining the Straight Grain Sewers for Sew and Show here:) 

Joining the Small Things readers here:)