Getting started on the New Year resolutions...

Hello again, happy new year! I hope that 2016 has started well for you.

I'm a little late wishing you happy new year, obviously, but we're still officially in January (if only by a few hours) so I hope it's not too cheeky! This January has been a bit of a cold, dark and dreary one for us, with crappy weather conditions since the week after Christmas, a minor surgery for my small boy this week (from which he's almost recovered thankfully) and a very difficult time for some of my best and oldest friends, so I am glad to see the back of it.

One of my new year resolutions was to get back sewing and blogging properly. I have really missed it this last year, and feel like my skills have gotten rusty and I've lost my inspiration. During January I decided that I needed to get moving with a couple of proper new projects and that this might kickstart things for me. Trying to finish out WIPs was just a bit too much for me and not inspiring me at all. The only exception was the Round and Round mini quilt which I finished up last night, and completely love how it turned out. It's been hanging around for a year and a half with no particular plan but I always liked the pattern. The pebble quilting had been in my head to use with the hand quilting but only this week I got around to doing it when I was home with my little man on nursing duty. You get a better idea of the texture here:

I'm going to hang this on the wall, maybe in the stairwell, as it is so cheerful and happy. First finish for 2016, woohoo!

For the new projects plan, I started out by looking for a big, complicated quilt pattern to really get my teeth into. Slightly mad, but you know, I feel sometimes if I'm working on something that's not challenging for me then I just get a bit bored and "meh" about it. So I had a look through my books and decided that the Marcelle Medallion fit the bill.

Yes, one part of me thinks I am gone quite mad taking on such a big pattern when I've done so little sewing lately and my time is so limited, but another part of me is excited and petrified in equal measure, and most importantly, I am feeling like I want to work on it every day which is exactly the point - its a challenge. I love piecing, its my favourite part of sewing, so the fact there is lots and lots of piecing in this will be just perfect for me.

I decided to epp the central star block for accuracy and not being a fan of y seams...so far so good, its not perfect but its getting there. I'm now working on the third quarter so hopefully by the middle of the week my star might be done. It's perfect work for sitting in front of the fire these cold evenings.

I have a broad colour scheme in my head but I haven't it all planned out so its a bit of a "see how it goes" project, which I love. I'm thinking light, bright and airy - pinks, purples, aqua, yellow and maybe some greens along with low volume prints....It may evolve though. I like how the central star is shaping up, I took a bit of a gamble on the colours here as I didn't do a mock up, but it is working I think.

I also started a small project too - the Patchwork Triangle Box pouch from Ayumi's "Patchwork Please" book. I want a pretty little box pouch for my make up essentials for my handbag and this fits the bill. I haven't done any zipper sewing for a good while and the construction is not the most straightforward but that's ok, I will get there.

The first panel was foundation paper pieced with those off-set triangle and honestly, foundation piecing is not my thing and I found it quite difficult. I have very poor spatial sense and the angles and piecing back to front just was a complete headwreck for me but I slogged away till I got it done, while watching the new series of Mr Selfridge on Netflix yesterday. 2 episodes it too me to do this tiny panel!

So that is my update. Suddenly I am sewing again - with a couple of projects on the go - it feels good! (Now, if I could only motivate myself to go to the pool to do my training session for my other big resolution - the Swim a Mile challenge in April - then I would feel even better.)