Top 5 of 2014

Happy New Year everyone! I hope you all had a fabulous festive season and have plenty of exciting things in store for 2015!

Some of you may be familiar with Gillian from Crafting A Rainbow's series "Top 5 of 2014". I've been enjoying reading these posts and it's got me thinking about what a great year I've had so I've decided to share my Top 5 sewing related highlights.

2014 - The year I started my blog! This was a big achievement for me as I'd been thinking about it for such a long time and it was a huge learning curve. I'm still baffled by the world of technology but I've managed to figure out just enough to get my blog off the ground and keep it running so far - yay! I'm not the most prolific writer (or sewer for that matter) but that's not the point, I really enjoy sharing my sewing experiences and it's been wonderful making new friends in the blogosphere.

Which brings me to my next highlight - I had a fabulous holiday in the UK in July and had the pleasure of meeting up with Nicole for a Goldhawk Road fabric shopping experience. Of course if it weren't for the wonderful world of blogging this probably wouldn't have happened.

As part of that holiday I also went to Lisbon with my wonderful friends where we had such a fantastic time and also managed to do even more fabric shopping!

I had a "significant" birthday this year and was so thrilled to get given "Serge", my serger. I'm still trying to get to grips with re-threading it but I'm loving it all the same, it makes finishing seams really fast and they look so much nicer.

In October I went to Japan to play music, dress up in crazy Halloween costume and go fabric shop in Tokyo and Osaka, returning to some of my favourite stores but also discovering a whole lot of new ones.

So, those were my top 5 highlights. I also had a blast taking part in some fun sewalongs: Madmen Challenge III; Sew Dolly Clackett; Lauren & Andi's Outfit Along, Pattern Review's Frankenpattern Contest and the Cat Lady Sewing Challenge and I made a dress for the Vintage Sewing Pledge.

I was lucky to have such a great year and I'm looking forward to more sewing, blogging, music and meeting new sewing friends in 2015. Looking ahead I'm not going to set too many sewing goals, my main priority is just to enjoy it. I do hope to improve on my sewing skills, fitting in particular and I'd love to be able to insert a zipper in under an hour! Also, I WILL master re-threading my serger!