Farewell 2011!!

2011 wasn't the best year of my life -- it was quite productive for me, workwise and also in terms of sewing -- but it was actually one of the most stressful and unbalanced years of my life, although I don't think one would get a strong sense of that from this  10-month-old blog...that's not really the function of stitchy blog, is it?  The generosity of those of you who have read and commented is truly one of the bright lights of my 2011.  Thank you so much for your kindness. 

I threw together a mosaic of some of the things I made this year.

1. DW's brown bear quilt, 2. FMQ experiment, back, 3. 9-patch baby quilt, 4. Spring baby quilt, 5. Baby "I" on her quilt!, 6. wedding quilt, finis!, 7. the big one, 8. orange string quilt, 9. "Links", 10. Ms. H's quilt, 11. In Bloom, for my mother, 12. In Bloom, back, 13. [gray geese] over the rainbow, 14. Garden Fence quilt, finis!!, 15. Sweet Pea Quilt, 16. sneak peek of Little Apples quilt, 17. sneak peek of Little Apples quilt, 18. a little knitting, 19. gnome pillow, 20. a well-loved gnome pillow, 21. M5882 dress...first try, 22. ModKid "Frida" dress #2, 23. naturally dyed wool, 24. natural dyes, 25. shibori experiment 1, 26. Penelope and the new pillow

Now I'm happy to move forward to a new year and a fresh start.

I have lots of resolutions in mind, including some that are very important to me personally, but are not craft-related. In a first draft of this post I detailed all the things I wanted to revive and reintroduce to my life.  While it was productive to put all those things in words, I don't want to weigh down this forum with too much of that stuff.  Suffice it to say that  I'm hoping that 2012 is the year I finally emerge from the (most recent) fog of pregnancy-babyhood-toddlerhood. I remember this process from the last time around...so here we go again!

I actually do have some sewing goals in mind...probably more than I can accomplish this year, realistically.  But why not aim high?  Here are the ones at the front of my mind right now.

*experiment with my quilting: the geometric wonders in Charlotte Warr Andersen's One Line at a Time, Encore, more play with my free motion quilting, more hand quilting.

*design in EQ7.  I finally watched the video tutorials, and am very excited by what this program can do.  Yay.

*design and make my father a king-sized quilt. Queen-sized is the largest I have made (start to finish) to date.

*finish my "Farmer's Wife" blocks.

*finish my Mystery Quilt.

*finish my hexagon projects.

*make one of the beauties from String Quilt Revival.

*get my new serger (still on layaway) and whip up a bunch of knit dresses for Frida.

*make some summer dresses for myself.

Whatever your experience of the past year has been, 

and whatever your hopes for 2012, 

I wish you a very sweet new year's eve and the best for the coming year!