2016 Sewing, Photography, and Art Roundup

Excuse the reflective beginning of this post, but to put it bluntly, 2016 was not a fun year for me. Also, please excuse the amount of photos in this post. I wanted I worked on this year that I’m pleased with to get mentioned in my post.

2016 is almost over and I’m happy to see it over. This year, like many people I talked to, I didn’t really have a great year. My year wasn’t good mostly because I took care of an ill family member and that family member eventually passed away. When it sunk in that my family member wasn’t going to live as long as I believed they could, I had a very hard time talking care of my family member knowing that there was nothing I could do to help them. But, with the assistance of my immediate family, friends, and faith, I got through it. I feel a lot better than I did a few months ago, but when I decided to go through 2016’s post to see what I can talk about in this end of year post, I felt sad because I didn’t get to do nearly as much as I planned to this year.

If I learned anything from 2017, it is that life is unpredictable in both good and bad ways and no amount of planning can save you from the unpredictable. Although I am sad my family member is no longer with me, I know they are in a better place and that I did my best taking care of them. I also learned how important family and friends are in a person’s life, how much grit and strength I truly have, and what loyalty really looks and feels like. I am a different person now and, although what I went through was very painful, I am glad I went through it. I may be a different person than I was in the beginning of the year, but I am a better person now. And I’m thankful for it.

Since I had a hard time with my personal life, I didn’t have the time or energy to work on anything “artistic”. I would draw, sew, and take photos, but everything would fall to the waist side because I was more worried about other, more important things. Still, I tried to work the last half of the year so I could start blogging again. 🙂

Because I was so busy, I didn’t have time to draw a lot and the only drawing I did was for fabric designs. I thought I’d be over designing new fabric designs, but I wasn’t and earlier this year ideas started to pour out of my head. I still have many designs I need to finish cleaning up and coloring before I can write about them or put them up for sale.

In addition to drawing fabric designs, I was able to participate in Inktober on Instagram. I wanted to do it for a while, but never had the chance to do it till this year.

I’m disappointed that I could draw more than Inktober sketches and fabric designs, but that’s how things turned out this year. I did draw a few personal drawing, but I didn’t mention them on my blog.

As for sewing, I was finally able to finish the skirt for Anna’s coronation dress from the movie Frozen!

And now that I lost weight, the waist band is too large for me. Eh. Oh well. I’m planning on taking it, but not until I’m done losing weight. Since I’m not sure when that will be, this skirt is sitting on a pile of fabric in my room waiting for me to do something with it. I’ll probably put it away until I’m done losing weight. Then I’ll drag it out and work on the waist band and bodice so I can call this costume done.

Another costume I worked on this year was Elsa’s Frozen Fever dress…

And Rey’s costume from Star Wars The Force Awakens…

Side Note: The Ivy in the lower left hand corner of the photo has grown. A lot. So much so I think I’ll need to trim it soon or else it will climb up my wall or something.

Since both costumes still fit me or, in the case of Rey, I can make the parts that are too big for me over again without any trouble. I plan on finishing both costumes in 2017.

Another costume I want to finish in 2017 is Clara Oswald’s Robots of Sherwood dress…

I WILL get this thing done in 2017! It’s almost done, but I need to take in the bodice so it will fit me better. I was planning on buying appliques and sew them onto the skirt, but I keep going back and forth about them. I think I’ll leave the skirt as-is so it will save me work and money. (The appliques I liked are not cheep)

Although the dress is not done, I did some work on it so it will fit me better and secure parts of the skirt better. I wrote a post about what I did and what I needed to do to finish the dress, but I never posted it because it never flowed right and I was too focused on other things to work on it. I hope to finish writing about the dress and publish the post in 2017.

In addition to costumes, I also added some tulle to a bought petticoat…

I didn’t want to include the petticoat in this post because I didn’t make the whole thing myself, but, since I didn’t to a lot of sewing this year, I decided to include it anyway. 🙂

As for non costume sewing, I remade my Tardis jumperskirt to have laces in the back…

And that’s about it.

I did work on other clothes but never finished them for a variety of reasons. The biggest complaint I have about what I worked on this year was this dress…

It was based off an expensive and collectable Vogue pattern I own. My version was already cut when I bought it, but all the instructions and pieces are there so I didn’t mind buying it. Especially since it was priced significantly less than the uncut patterns. My wallet loved me for that.

Anyway, since the pattern was already cut, I used it as a base, enlarged it to fit me, cut out the pattern in plaid (tartan) fabric, and tried to make a dress out of it. It didn’t turn out like I hoped. It didn’t fit right and the lines didn’t match the way I wanted them to. Since I bought the last of the fabric at the store, I couldn’t go back and get more. So, there it is. The tartan dress that looks ok and the fit is passable, but I’m not in love with. Not sure if I’ll ever get to wear it out in public. :/

I have other plans for the dress pattern, mostly messing with a traced copy I made of the original pattern and make a dress that looks nothing like the way the original dress did. But, if everything works out like I hope it will, the dress will look pretty and really awesome. Well, it will be pretty and really awesome if you like plaids and tartans. 🙂 Since I’m not sure if my plans will work out well, I decided not to talk about them in detail until the dress is finished. Just in case anything goes wrong and I need to abandon it.

As for photography, I took a lot of photos, most of them can be seen on my Flickr, but I wasn’t able to update my Flickr with new photos. I’m not sure if I will, not because I don’t care about my Flickr, but because I’m so busy anymore I don’t know if I’ll ever have the time to upload everything. We’ll see how 2017 goes.

Anyway, here are a few photos I used in blog posts that are my favorites…

So, that’s about it for this post! There will be a post about my sewing plans for 2017 coming in January. I plan on going into more detail about the most important sewing projects I have planed and want to blog about. 🙂

Thank you for reading!