2019: The sewing year that didn't go to plan

I started this year with a lot of grand plans, which is not at all unusual: I tend to start every year with a lot of grand plans. On the sewing side of things, though, I have very little to show for those plans. I made very few garments this year, and even fewer of the things I made were at all interesting.  Here, then, is an abbreviated version of my usual lengthy end-of-year/start-of-year posts:

This Year's Sewing

Various things I made this year

This year I made:

3 pairs of PJ shorts or pants (my usual TNT patterns)
4 pairs of trousers (2 x Jalie Eleonore, 1 Ottobre pattern, 1 Burda pattern)
4 tops or tunics (2 Butterick, 1 Ottobre, 1 Simplicity)
1 cardigan (Ottobre)
Of these 12 items only one was really a total fail: a pair of cotton trousers that just never fit correctly. I abandoned them as a bad job after wearing them about 10 times in the late summer and autumn. So I got some wear out of them, but hated them throughout. I feel remarkably virtuous for having worn them 10 times. Strangely, however, the thing that I made and loved the absolute most was a pair of Jalie Eleonore trousers that I made from the exact same, marginally problematic, fabric. Just goes to show the power of a good pattern. I can overlook the fabric issues when I love the finished item, but the fabric was just another strike against the trousers I discarded.

I also finished one (giant) knitted scarf, and knitted three woolly hats.

The list of things I didn't do is MUCH longer. In my last post, I said I was going to make a suit. I ended up buying one, even though my RTW options were not what I wanted. I didn't sew a single pattern from this year's Burda magazines. I didn't get anything ready, really, for the hopefully-not-too-distant day when I go back to work.

Money, Money, Money

On the positive side, I also didn't buy much. I spent literally a third of my usual sewing budget, and about two thirds of my usual clothing budget (plus a suit, which fell outside my usual clothing budget because my personal finance system is arcane and stupidly complex).

The largest share of my money, as always, went on fabric. I spent 34% of my budget on fabric (plus a gift certificate given to me for my birthday that I have not included in this spending), and bought 30m of fabric in total. The rest of my budget went to my magazine subscriptions (22%), patterns (14%), and the remaining 30% went into a combination of "other", which this year included a subscription to Bluprint (Craftsy's subscription service) for several months, plus PR membership, and a small percentage of spending in each of the notions, knitting and embroidery categories. I have since cancelled Bluprint, because no way was I getting any kind of value from that subscription.

Alas, a lot of my "savings" from not buying tons of fabric went towards other, completely unrelated hobbies this year, especially books, so I don't have vast reserves of cash to show for my restraint!

The State of the Stash

I had actually hit stash equilibrium for the year -- 23m used, 23m bought -- when my brother sent me a gift card for a fabric shop and I went shopping. So I've ended the year 7m up from where I started. I just barely squeaked under the 200m in stash mark for the end of the year (198m). Needless to say, nowhere near the 50m decrease I proposed for the year, but given how little I sewed it's really not that bad as an outcome. At least I didn't keep shopping at my former rate while I wasn't sewing!

Acquisitions and Discards

This year I acquired 40 garments, of which 12 were hand-made, and the remainder were RTW. Of the 28 RTW items I added to my wardrobe, 21 were things I consider to be high turnover items (mainly t-shirts and exercise clothes), 5 were tailoring items (my new suit), plus 1 pair of jeans and 1 shirt given to me as gift.

That is the smallest number of garments I have acquired in a year since I started keeping records in 2014. I posted in the autumn about how it seemed like my ambitions for a hard-wearing, low turnover wardrobe had really coalesced this year, and I feel like this low acquisition rate is somewhat evidence of it. I just didn't need all that much new this year.

On the other hand, I discarded a whopping 59 garments, and my overall wardrobe declined in size by about 9%. Of these discards, just under half (28 items) wore out. I like to keep an eye on number of wears I get from my garments, and of the stuff that I discarded because it was no longer in good enough condition for my purposes, the average number of times I had worn them was 33 (range: 20-47). The number is skewed downwards by t-shirts and other knits that just don't have good longevity at all and only get 20-25 wears. This still seems really unsatisfactory to me, but I have not yet hit on a solution for the speed at which knits deteriorate that really works for me (the most obvious solution, stop tumble drying altogether, being unworkable in winter in my house -- I do line dry in better weather).

The other 31 discards were a mix of "why did I think this was a good idea" and "I liked this a lot a while ago but I haven't worn it in the last 18 months to 2 years" (average number of wears = 6, range 0 to 18). I really hate this category of discard and I wish this number were very much lower. That said, I'm now at the point where I have very few things in my wardrobe that have low wear counts (unless they're very new or clothes for the job I don't have yet) and I don't own anything I don't want to wear, so maybe 2020 will be the year where my discard rate will be more where I want it to be.

And that's it for me for 2019! I hope everyone has a wonderful last week of 2019, and best wishes to everyone for the new year and the new decade. ❤️

I'll be back in the new year with some plans for 2020, including planning an outfit for a family wedding and making some "business casual" separates.