Strolling into the New Year

Happy New Year! I hope that your festive break, whatever it looked like for you, was an enjoyable, or at least a calm and peaceful one?

I wanted to do a little update on my creative doings over the festive period and as we ease into this new year. There seems to be a huge push back on the idea of resolutions and the ‘new year, new me’ ethos in recent years. I think a lot of it has to do with strenuous exercise regimes, strict diets, denying yourself pleasures and the tumultuous events of recent years leading to us feeling that the job of merely surviving is enough to be getting on with. I certainly get that.

Personally though I love the hope of a bit of ‘fresh start’ energy. It’s a new year, a blank page, nothing has gone wrong yet and that brings feelings of optimism and possibility for me.

So I like to make a few plans for things I’d like to try and accomplish or focus on in the year ahead. When it comes to expectations and goal setting I like to keep things loose and achievable. Less about end results, more about deciding on a direction of travel and seeing if that takes me where I wanted to go. Looking out for some milestones along the way and seeing if it’s those or others that I find.

Which brings me to my intention last year for Substack. I wanted to try and rejuvenate my blog post writing and record my creative projects. I wrote 14 posts, I can’t say I completely succeeded in that endeavour, but I know me, and it tends to take me a bit of a run up at such things to really get going with them and the new year seems as good a time as any to renew my attempt.

To begin, I thought I’d wrap up the last of my makes from 2025…

Christmas Economy Block Quilt

I talked about this quilt on my Christmas Special Podcast (which I’ll link below if you fancy it). I had finished the quilt top and just had the backing and binding to do. I wasn’t necessarily planning on getting it all done in time for Christmas, I was just aiming for it not going too far into this year and hoping it would be ready for next season. As it turned out, I managed the last of the binding stitches while sitting under it on Christmas Eve, so that was lovely.

I didn’t want it to be a huge quilt as I haven’t made one for a while. This was intended to ‘ease me back' in’ and I wanted to quilt it on my home machine too, so I went for a lap size using 8” ‘Economy blocks’. (I used the tutorial on this site as it included info on how to adapt sizes.) I had fun choosing and fussy cutting the centres for those and although the whole thing isn’t perfect, I did enjoy the process and was quite content to let the imperfections go. I also have a ‘quiet moments’ video of me making the quilt top so I’ll stick the link for that below too.

Father Christmas Felt Decoration

Earlier in the year I had gifted myself this little treat from Pretty Fabrics & Trims and saved it for the ‘inbetween days’, when I stitched it up in the glow of the fairy lights. As I have said so many times before, I love Sarah’s kits and this one was no exception and just perfect for those lazy days. Next year he’ll get his chance to hang on the tree.

Gilded Doilies

You can never have enough doilies, or so my motto seems to be and even though I have quite a few, I still found myself thinking there was a place or two about my Christmas decked home which didn’t yet have one! So, I whipped up a few more in patterns I’ve used before, but this time adding a golden touch to make them more festive. Two using the Inscribed Snowflake by Julia Hart with different amounts of gold and one using Festive Feast by Drops and I love how they all turned out.

Sitting by the Fire Blanket

I also put the finishing touches to my latest vast and very cozy granny square blanket. Again this was a finish I wasn’t sure I would manage in 2025, particularly as I suspected that the joining might be a rather lengthy process. It turned out to come together, if not quickly, then as least much quicker than I anticipated and the border was complete before we’d iced the cake or finished wrapping the presents.

This one deserves an exclusive post of it’s own though I think, so for now I’ll leave you with this small peek and a link to my post earlier this year where I shared the story so far…

Thanks so much for reading and I’ll hope to be back with more projects soon.

Wishing you a healthy and happy 2026!

S x

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