SewbySanne

At the beginning of November, I wrote a blog post about my plans for the last two months of the year, joining Het Naaldbos’s Finishing Party to see if I could bring my WIP stack down again. Today feels like the perfect day to look back and see how it went.

I was totally overambitious this year—I knew that going in—but I still managed to do much less than I had hoped. The last two months just flew by. A lot happened in my personal life, and there was very little sewing time.

Still, I’m happy with the progress I made, so let’s take a look:

I finished both swaps on time for their deadlines, and they were both received well. I also managed to finish several quilts for donation. These were goals 1, 7, and 3.

I had a lot of English paper piecing on my wishlist for the end of the year—far too much to realistically finish. But during the last week of the year, I was really in the mood for slow stitching. I finished the yellow-ochre hexagon table runner (goal 8), added one row of stars to my Super Nova quilt (goal 3), and added lots of little hexies to the Tilda EPP top.

There were also some pretty big quilt tops on my list. For the foxes, I completed all the heads, arms, and pants pieces. I finished all 100 blocks from my accidental QAL (see this blog post) and even started adding sashing between the blocks.

I also had a few unplanned finishes. I completed both Sea Glass quilts we started during our Dutch MQG guild day. Both are now ready to find a nice place on a wall somewhere in my house.

My final finish of the year was a set of Christmas ornaments using patterns by Happy Sew Lucky. Take a good look at the background of the photo—the grey squares are 1″ × 1″ for reference.

Looking ahead to 2026, I really want to get my WIP list down to five projects or fewer. That feels like a doable goal. I haven’t added any new BOMs to my list for next year, so let’s see how that goes.

Another goal for 2026 is #usewhatyouhave. I want to avoid buying new fabrics and instead work from my stash, using what I already have before bringing anything new in. This should definitely help clear my sewing room a bit—and it will also be a fun creative challenge to work with what’s already there.