2012 Sewing Round Up

I know I said I wasn't going to do a post about everything I sewed in 2012, but right after I said it was too overwhelming, I got curious. What exactly did I do last year, and how does it compare to the year before? Here are some statistics; this year I put them into the form of charts!

Number of items sewn has increased in all categories, especially when it comes to non-dresses! I'm so happy to say that 2012 was the year I tackled pants/shorts, underwear, and outerwear, although there's still so much more I want to learn when it comes to those categories. I also branched out into using buttons and hooks and eyes as closures, instead of just zippers. And probably the biggest change was that I ended up sewing waaaay more with knits than the previous year. The accomplishment that I'm proudest of, though, is that almost half of what I sewed was done using patterns of my own making! Granted, the patterns mostly boiled down to three basic blocks, but still! I also think it's telling that the next highest number of patterns came from free patterns put out by other generous sewing bloggers. I'm pretty happy with these numbers; the only thing I would change next year is making more patterns by independent pattern companies. I've got a Tiramisu, Cambie and Thurlow in my queue for this spring.

I also couldn't figure out a way to put the following stats into chart form...

Blogging community "events" participated in: 4 (Sew Grateful week, the Sew Weekly, but only sporadically, the Summer Sewing Swap, and VPLL's 1912 Project)...this one makes me so happy, and I totally want to participate in more!
Projects that used sheets/curtains/other non-traditional yardage: 17 (mostly sheets, but a couple of curtains and a tablecloth too!), up from last year's 13
Stashbusting projects: 16, including two fabrics from the earliest stages of my stashing, definitely an increase over last year's 6! It's just too bad that fabric-buying more than made up for it...

And speaking of fabric buying, the average cost of projects this year was $5.91, a slight decrease from last year! I blame the FIDM scholarship store, Michael Levine Loft, and several fabric gifts for the decrease. The total cost of all the garments though, was $432. This is almost exactly double last year's amount, but the number of garments I made is also roughly double, so this is actually reasonable.

As for time spent sewing, the average time spent per garment was 6.7 hours, for a total of almost 491 hours of sewing this year! I didn't calculate this number last year, so I have no idea if the average time per garment went up. I'm inclined to say that there was little change, since I know that that's about how long a dress took me last year, and that's pretty much all I sewed. I will say that the range of time spent per garment definitely widened, though, as I had many more knit projects that took less than two hours, and many time-intensive projects that took upwards of 20 (e.g. my jacket, my Elizabethan stays, the Girl on Fire dress, etc.). Considering that I tackled so many more tricky fabrics and patterns and PANTS, I'm actually surprised that the number isn't higher!

And now, the really scary part is the actual collage of everything I've made, minus the five fails that I listed previously. I also somehow missed my Ms. Frizzle dress, chiffon tunic or Mr. Cation's shirt, for some reason, but I'm not going to go back and add them in after getting all of these pictures to play nicely together.

Whew, what a year! I knew that I had been productive, but seeing it all put together like that is a little scary. This is one of the reasons why I'm taking on the Historical Sew Fortnightly Challenge: I don't really need any more modern clothes. While I still want to tackle jeans and jackets, I don't think my closet can handle this frenetic pace of sewing for another year. I've donated quite a bit of clothing (both RTW and me-made from last year), but really, how many tops and dresses does one really wear? I mean, I get lazy in doing laundry, but not that lazy. So here's to sewing slower, larger projects, and being more thoughtful in what kind of fabric I take in and sew up!