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Christmas is over, and New Year’s has yet to arrive. I found myself drifting through this no man’s land, where the normal rules of time and space don’t seem to apply and I have to physically check on a calendar what day it is. So it is on this state I decided to use this weird subsection of time and space to write and reflect on 2019.

In 2019 I had many setbacks and challenges which I’d rather not focus on at the moment. For now, I want to celebrate the good. I truly believe that celebrating the good, big or small, expands your energy and spreads momentum.

I had the amazing good fortune to publish 77 blog posts here.

It was a full year!

I experienced some highs like reaching 10k subscribers on my sewing YouTube channel and running my first Youtube giveaway. I was honoured to join the ranks of The Clothes Making Mavens podcast team as The Joy COrrespondent – a role I am relishing.

In 2019, I finally took the plunge to start a podcast (creatively named The Saturday Night Stitch Show). With 4 episodes under my belt – I am insanely proud of myself for this particular achievement.

One of my Minerva Blogger Network Makes was selected to be printed in Love Sewing Magazine.

I started making sewing tutorial videos on YouTube – though they are not polished – I hope they can be of use to someone.

I look back on this year with a lot of gratitude and a lot of love.

This sewing year was punctuated by 2 sewing events that I attended – The Stitchroom Sewcial in Loughborough and Frocktails hosted by Sew Different Patterns. The highlight at Froctails was seeing my garments worn on others on the catwalk – surreal – I wonder is that how designers feel?

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Here is a collage of all my sewing projects from this year. I thought it would be fun to use pictures that didn’t make the final cut :-). There is a slideshow as well.

I ended the year with challenging myself to daily vlogging in December on YouTube – a youtube tradition called Vlogmas. It was fun. I love that we now have the memories of Christmas 2019 in video format – we shared with our family around the world our Christmas adventures.

Though this blog charts my sewing life among other things – I couldn’t do any of this without the support and help of my family. We’d like to thank you.

Thank you for reading, it means so much to me that I get to be a part of your sewing world. To my fellow bloggers who embraced community over competition and assisted me this year Laura, Eleanor and Josie, thank you so much. I am so grateful for our strong local sewing community.

One thing I learnt this year…

I started off the year with a “Done is better than perfect” attitude. At some point in 2018, I realised that perfectionism was killing my self-growth. In 2019, I tentatively looked for ways to enliven growth.

“Done is better than perfect” means that the moment I start to think that I cant finish this project/blog post/youtube video/task because it needs just the right pictures/light/graphics/etc then I knew it simply had to be done instead of perfect. The biggest fear I had was of publishing content that I thought was subpar – and I did publish a fair bit of that. But guess what – the sky didn’t fall in on me. The world continued as it did before. The only difference was that I could do better the next time. And I did. I am getting better at a lot of things.

Somewhere along the line I lost the fear and moved out of my comfort zone – hence the sewing tutorials and videos without any makeup on. All growth happens outside the comfort zone by risking and accepting failure often.

After practising “Done is better than perfect” for a year I learnt that “Continous improvement is better than delayed perfection“. That’s the most valuable lesson of all.

I leave you with the words of Neil Gaiman –

“I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes.

Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re Doing Something.

So that’s my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody’s ever made before. Don’t freeze, don’t stop, don’t worry that it isn’t good enough, or it isn’t perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.

Whatever it is you’re scared of doing, Do it.

Make your mistakes, next year and forever.”
― Neil Gaiman

What was your most valued lesson/realisation of 2019?