Remedy for the listless: make nine

If in turning the new year you find yourself coming up short in inspiration, a quick list offers a tool to rekindle: make nine.

A long, drawn-out sewing project combined with holiday frenzy, rolling into a month of intense report writing left me high and dry, or rather blah and blasé, even faced with all my favorite fabrics and yarns in my newly downsized stash.

Nine is nice number for slightly more ambitious garments: the big projects, the repeat sessions, the future wardrobe heavyweights. Add in some lower hanging fruit to ease in, divide by twelve months, totally doable. In fact, nine is exactly what I completed last year.

A bit of wardrobe annual planning, skill-building goal setting, and moodboard all in one (all image sources here):

• Wiksten kimono, in Community Supported Cloth/Climate Beneficial Wool
• Lander pants, in cotton canvas
• Penny raglan, in linen knit
• Colorwork cardigan, swan-inspired, in Gotland wool
• Cropped sweater, in super bulky Icelandic wool from Lydia’s Flock
• Simple tote, in Fox canvas
• Underthings, in jersey scraps and trim
• Tunic, in khadi cloth
• Morgan jeans, also in Fox canvas

These nine projects all pull from my current fabric and yarn supplies as a way of reinvigorating my broader goal: to use what I have. In fact, listing nine things to make provided a baseline to achieve my long-sought goal of simplifying my stash. I wrote out a calendar with 1-2 projects per month, including the nine above and a few things I’ve long promised to make for others, or ideas + fabric pairings that have been idling on my shelf for too long.

Might this contradict all that slowing down and simmering I espoused just last week? I wholeheartedly maintain that there’s value in planning things out and letting them linger, yet I think this can be paired with challenging oneself to make space. Every project I’ve slated for 2018 has been lingering for as long as I’ve had the fabric, which is at least a year, so it’s almost a speeding up to slow down, if that makes sense. And it’s perfectly timed to coordinate with the #makeyourstash camaraderie this spring, if you’d like to join.

Throughout the year, I’ll aim to share updates on how the list and stash challenges fare, and a few ways I plan to keep my project pace and consumption in check.