New Year, New Start

I'm moving in 4 to 6 weeks time, first of all to live with my parents and then hopefully into a little rented house of my own. At the moment I am packing which is rather interfering with my sewing and therefore not very interesting on a sewing blog.

I have spent some time over the last few days (with phone encouragement from Jenni aka YorkshireLass) sorting through my scraps, cut out and gone wrong projects and getting rid of quite a few of them. Its been hard but good. People seem to vary in their ability to keep their lives decluttered and I'm not that great at it, but I've been making some choices about what I do want to keep (nice fabric, sewing books, Burda and Threads magazines) and what I can get rid of (gone wrong projects, old generic women's magazines) and whilst I still have quite a bit of stuff its more managable than it seemed to start with.

I've packed up some of the unfinished and refashioning projects to keep and will take them with the sewing machines to my parents and over the couple of months I am there plan to do them all, and then either keep or release the results depending on how they come out. Then I'll hopefully be going to my new place with no UFOs, which would be a really great new start.

I have signed up for SWAP and 12 jackets on Stitchers Guild, but I think the timing is just all wrong for me on SWAP and I probably won't be able to do it all (especially not with the new techniques twist this year) so we'll see how things work out there. The 12 jackets runs for the whole year so I might well be able to do more later in the year when my moving is over.

Anyway re SWAP, never say never, and I may well be able to do some sewing in the gaps between other things, and use all of the permitted 3 purchased/premade items slots by pulling existing stuff from my wardrobe. This would avoid buying new garments (something I am also trying to do) but still allow me to create the collection. I have the SWAP fabrics put to one side so they are accessible when I have the time and sewing buzz to attack them. The collection colours are Chocolate Brown, Teal, Turquoise and Cream, and a tentative approach would be for it to be an easy to pack travel wardrobe entitled 'Moving On' to reflect all the moving done whilst sewing it! On that basis I should try to sew a few pieces in each location I live in 2011.