Hello!

What has happened to Stitchin’ the Northwest? I blog once or twice a year usually at the end of the year because I finally have time to think about it. Life is busy and the blog has not been at the forefront. So what have I been doing? A lot of time is taken up by work and my family. My son started school and it’s been a whirlwind of activity.

Other things I’ve been doing… I went on a sewing journey into the world of bag making for about 5 years and quilting dropped off my plate because I told myself that quilts take longer to sew. Really, I was more interested in the variety of sewing I was doing while bag making. Different steps to follow and not continuously sewing straight seams. I did learn a lot of skills: zipper installation (metal and nylon), sewing 3D objects, working with different fabrics, and having patience when things didn’t go right the first time. I did find that I was having perfectionistic tendencies and that was stressful to me and made things not as fun. I’ve burnt myself out a bit.

What am I doing now? I’m exploring a variety of things and I have a list of things I want to experiment with in the next year. Those will be detailed here as they are worked on. I’m trying to resurrect the blog and see if I can post more frequently and photograph processes of what I learn through the next year. I don’t want to have the pressure to create something beautiful every time I try or make something. It’s time to play and create freely.

Will items be for sale? Probably not, they may be gifted to friends and family who have interest in them. If made items are taking up space, then I may do occasional sales a couple times a year.

I don’t want to detail out everything I want to do because I may not be able to deliver on all the things on my list for 2025. I will tell you one thing, I’m working on my garden and it’s not just any garden but a dye garden. I’ve never planned or had a garden before so this is a new adventure. A dye garden will have flowers and plants that I can harvest to make botanical dyes to dye fabric and make pigments. I’m moving away from chemical dyes because they are not good for the environment or the people who make the dyes. I have books and books on botanical dyes so I have a lot of reading to do about the subject. I hope to share some of what I learn.

Happy creating!

Camille