Maybe… I’d like to.

I’ve been thinking about it on and off since I last wrote here. More than four years ago, I know… It’s hard to believe, but I know it’s been that long. It seems like yesterday. Okay, maybe not yesterday, a little bit further that that, but certainly not four years and four months and a few days more. Can I hope to do better this time? Stick to posting, even though I know I have even less free time than I had in 2016? I know I should probably write shorter posts, or maybe drop one language, but I like writing in French and at the same time being able to share with people around the globe who don’t speak French. And I like being able to express what I want, even if it means longer posts.

We’ll see… I think I’ll try it and we’ll see where it goes. Hopefully it won’t take me months (or years!) to write the next post.

In the meantime, what have I been up to during those years. Not much as changed. I sewed (not as much as I’d like), I collected more sewing books, patterns, fabrics, notions and vintage magazines (probably more that I should have), I got a new job (in the same field as before), my son grew up. And I got another baby! A cute little girl, as mischevious as she’s adorable. I try to learn to care for plants instead of causing them to die. Get better at cooking to feed my family ealthy food and change our eating habits. I finaly tried tai-chi-chuan and really like it. I’m trying to get back to drawing a bit. And at the begining of the year I broke something for the first time in my life: my shoulder, and it’s not particularly fun. It’s surprising how quickly you loose your ability to move correctly and how long it takes to recover it (still a work in progress). Please be careful when you go down a staircase. But in short, like went on.

Thank you for sticking with me if you read this and are still here at the end of this post. Hugs to you (virtual and from far away, of course)! I hope you’re safe and will remain so in these troubled times. And see you soon to talk about sewing, of course, but other things too!

I told you I’d try to come back for one last post before the new year. I intended to share the last sewing project I made in 2015. Sadly I had just a short period of free time today and I baked scones for our friends instead. It’s for brunch tomorrow, hoping that 1. they turn out okay, since it’s a recipe I’m using for the first time and 2. they’ll still be okay tomorrow morning when we’ll be eating them. ^^; The good news is that I started processing the pictures, so it shouldn’t be long before you see this project here.

In the meantime I’m leaving you with the teaser picture above and I wish you a very nice New Year’s eve!

Is it possible that we’ve come to the end of the year already? How fast did autumn fly… It seems it started only a few weeks ago, and yet yesterday it was the winter solstice. I’ve been engulfed by a huge wave of work that left me little time for anything else and from which I came out quite exhausted. Luckily it’s getting calmer now and I’m slowly getting back to my normal life, and enjoying it. And of course I’m preparing for the holidays.

For me Christmas is all about family, be it your real blood family or the extended “family” you create for yourself over the years. Our son being older we can share more with him this year. He asked to help decorating the Christmas tree, discovered with pleasure the Advent calendar and its chocolates (we usually limit sugary things, but we’re making an exception), learned about Santa (although for now he doesn’t mean much to him gift-wise, it’s just a guy he recognizes on illustrations. I’m not set on telling him that all gifts come from Santa. I like the idea that we carefuly choose relevant presents for our loved ones on Christmas, isn’t it lovely and magical in itself? But as Santa Claus is part of our culture he has to know him, even if it’s just as a story). He likes to listen to his book with Christmas songs and loves looking at the illuminations in the streets and gardens. We’re having a tiny bit of time to spend together, just the two of us, before we start the usual Christmas trips to see family, and I’m happy about it. This afternoon for tea we shared some cinnamon cookies that I had just baked, it was nice.

I have many sewing projects to share with you (some of which are totally off season now!), and I intend to do so, but for now I’m going to wish you all a very happy and merry Christmas! May you have lovely people to share it with and a wonderful time. I’m going to use the few days off I have to rest and enjoy my family, and maybe do a tiny bit of sewing, who knows? And I’ll try to be back for one last post before the new year comes.

Just a quick note to let you know about a new page that appeared earlier this year: a yearly overview of my projects. You can find it here : http://anomori.com/blog/?page_id=1601. Each year, towards the end of the year or the beginning of a new one, you see overview posts appear on sewing blogs. I’ve never done it before, but at the beginning of 2015 I felt the urge to do one (even though I noticed fewer of those on the sewing blogs I read ^^; ). I guess with me stopping the sewing lessons I felt the need to look back on the past year and see how it went. I always have the feeling that I’m not sewing that many things, especially compared to some of the bloggers I follow. Since I had never done one of those posts, I had to dig into my archives to find my past projects so that I could compare. And in the end this page listing all the past projects I could remember and find was born!

I will add to it as I post new (or old) projects. It’s fun to see this kind of overview of my past work. Even though it is true that I don’t produce as much as others, I don’t really care about that. But I do care that I don’t produce enough compared to all the list of clothes I imagine in my head. So my goal will be to get better at that: use the fabric I already have (and have projects for) and actually make and finish more projects! This year I’d like to make more clothes in knit fabric, make clothes for my son and start making doll clothes again. I started the year with many projects in mind ! One step at a time, I hope to get closer to achieving them.

What about you? Do you do compilation posts or pages? Do you set goals for the year (or any other period of time) or do you decide on the spot?

Hope to be back soon, cross your fingers for me! In the meantime, please let me know, do you have plans to make handmade presents for Christmas this year?

We bought an apartment!

And we had some work to do inside before we could settle in. More than we initially thought, as it wasn’t paint on the walls of the main rooms (dining room and bedrooms), but something that we had to remove before we could paint. So we spent quite some time…

sanding,

scrapping things off the walls,

smoothing the walls,

painting,

cleaning,

and finally, moving in

and unpacking everything.

It’s a huge investment, which is stressful, but the place is great now that we made it our own. And we learned new skills. We wanted to do most of the work before moving in, because of Mr. E., which was stressful and exhausting, but thanks to the very nice people who helped us we managed it! We have wonderful friends and family members. In case you’d like to see the before/after pictures I posted everything on my Flickr account. This past summer we also…

Celebrated Mr E.’s first birthday! As you can see he loved the paper wrapping his gifts. It’s not always easy to have a child, but I love him dearly and I’m really happy to know him.

Improved the apartment. Two words: “Thanks Ikea”.

Spent a one week holiday in the south west of France to see one of my two best friends and my god-daughter, her little girl who was born only three months after our son. They live in the US and were in France to see the family. Mr E. discovered the swimming pool and loved it!

And I colored my hair! ^^ You might have guessed it on the last pictures I posted, or seen it on Facebook. I love it!

In the middle of all this I did manage to start sewing a little bit again at the end of summer. I made a dress for my god-daughter, which I forgot to take pictures of. I’m hoping her mom will send me some so that I can show it here. And I did a little something for two friends’ wedding. I do have picture of this project. The past weeks have been quite busy but I’m slowly working on more toddler clothes at the moment.

I also wanted to share that I created a Facebook account! It’s over here. This account is for all things creative and crafty, and since it’s for sharing links and short texts I can post there even if I don’t have time to write blog articles. Part of my posts are about the dolls I collect, but if I have more sewing-related contacts it will encourage me to increase the sewing-related talk. Please give me an excuse to do so!

It was fun to read all comments and see what people like and what they would make with those prints. There are definitely some favorites. The winners, with 6 mentions, are “Fleurs d’été”  (the red one having 3 mentions) and “Dot Power” (with 3 mentions of the purple version). Then there are “Ecorce” in purple and “Pois perdus” (3 in blue, 1 in pink) with 4 mentions each. I think the blue “Pois perdus” was the most ordered motif during the jersey sale. Then “Jungle” was mentioned 3 times. And with 2 mentions we have “Indian summer”, “Pétales de cerisier”, “Tulipe”, “Flower power” and “Pois fleuris”. There were also diferent fabrics of the “Arlequin” series. As to what you’d do with them, as could be expected you talked about dresses and skirts, sometimes retro inspired A-line shaped, blouses and tops (the Datura pattern by Deer and Doe being considered by 2 commenters) but also about bags (3 times) or cushions (2 times). And of course you talked a lot about swimsuits, which is not suprising considering the current sale. You seem to like the Soma pattern from Papercut, which was released not long ago and is totally cute, so I definitely understand (did you see Lauren’s versions? You definitely have to!). I’d love to make a swimsuit but it won’t be for this year, I won’t have enough time sadly… If you want to read everyone’s suggestions I suggest you go read the comments directly. As for me, here are the motifs I ordered during the jersey sale, the two on the right to make matching tops for my skirt and the Dot Power in purple just because:

On a more personal note I hope you all had a nice week-end. It was a three days week-end for us here, and I really enjoyed it: we had a sewing party with some friends, it was wonderful! During one and a half day all we did was sew, eat (lots of yummy food) and chat together. There were 5 of us in total, plus my friend’s father since it was at her parents house. It was the first time I did something like this, we had a blast and are totally planning to do it again! As a result I will have a few things to share with you soon. Here is a small teaser…

Last Saturday it was my blog’s birthday. As you can see I took a few minutes to celebrate during a short escape to the coast. ^_^ Yes, it is supposed to be a birthday cake that you see drawn in the sand. ;p Mr E. [my 10 months old son for those who are new around here] discovered the sand on the beach, it was funny: at first he was scared, then skeptical, then intrigued and by the end he was covered in it as the result of his playing. XD

I have to say that I’m not even sure how old this blog exactly is. I wish I’d find time to write more often but I like it however it is. Through the years it became a part of who I am, just like sewing is, and I like spending time here with you. I made some nice acquaintances thanks to it and I hope to make more in the future. So here’s to another year of blogging!

And since blogs are about community and connecting, I’m celebrating with you by doing a giveaway! You probably realized I’m quite smitten with La Modette‘s cheerful prints. I want to share the love and support a local designer, so I’m offering a 20 euros credit to her store. Here’s your chance to test her fabrics. ^_^ If you haven’t read it already, you can find my test garment from her poplin here and the links to the others testers on La Modette’s blog. The website is still in French only, but she sends her fabric everywhere in the world (and you can pay by Paypal). If there are enough entries from non-french speaking people and a need for it I might post some explanations in English on how to order, but I think it shouldn’t be too difficult.

How to enter? Go check La Modette‘s website and come back here to let me know which motif you would get and for what project (if you already have an idea). You can earn another entry by sharing this on your blog, Twitter, Facebook (with public access) or other places and coming back here to share the link to your post in another comment. Giveaway is open until next Tuesday (that’s June 10) 7pm10pm Paris time. I will randomly pick a winning comment shortly after that so you have time to use the code on the next fabric order if you want. I got swatches for those: the voile is super soft and the polyamide seems indeed perfect for a swimsuit, soft, thick enough and stretchy with good recovery.

As for me, I’m going to think of the perfect use for the poplins I just received. I can’t wait to play with the different sizes and search how to combine them in projects. ^_^

Giveaway is now closed, thank you for your participation.

They take the soon to be aired french version of The Great British Sewing Bee as the final proof that sewing is a thing again. I was a little bit disappointed in the content but I found it nice to read about sewing in such a magazine. And it is true that sewing is getting more and more popular in France. Contrary to some other countries we don’t study sewing at school anymore (my mother did in the 60s) and I think most women of my parents age don’t regularly sew, so people from my generation didn’t get an early acquaintance with sewing through school or their parents. Therefore sewing wasn’t very popular for quite some time, and many fabric stores closed. For a few years now we’ve seen many new fabric designers, modern fabric stores, independent pattern brand and sewing books (first translated from japanese and more and more written by French people) arriving. There are also more offerings for sewing lessons. It’s a really good thing, we get access to many interesting things directly in France. Let’s hope it will keep on that way and get even better!

What about in your place, is sewing getting more popular also? Or has it always been quite common for people to know how to sew?