Year in Review: Sewing in 2012

This has been quite a year for my sewing!  Probably the biggest change this year has been sewing for others.  Well, that and using my sewing challenge to plan out wardrobe style sewing.  Here is a look at my total output:

8 Tops
5 Pants
1 Skirts
3 Dresses
5 Coats, Jackets, Sweaters
15 Skating Costumes (for me)
15 Skating Costumes (for others)

TOTAL = 52

So, wow, that's a lot of sewing!  Overall I was quite pleased with my results this year, and I am really glad I decided to give myself a year-long sewing challenge, even though I didn't have the time to keep up with it in later months.  Anyway, here is what I managed to make for it:

(1) Basic Black Dress (BS-07-2011-131)

(3) Classic Trousers (BS-10-2011-127)

(6) Any Occasion Top (McCall's 6078)

(7) Skirt (BWOF-02-2005-128)

(8) Day Dress (Simplicity 2369)

(10) Sweatsuit Alternative (Simplicity 2369 Top, BS-06-2011-114 Pants)

(Bonus 1) Raincoat (Burda 7360)

(Bonus 2) Wool Coat (Butterick 5685)

(Bonus 5) "Unexpected" Trendy Item (Wide legged trousers - Patrones Extra 10-40)

(Bonus 6) Any Item from my Sewing Plans List (My Image M1003 Cardigan)

Overall I would say my Tim Gunn inspired wardrobe has been mostly a success!  I have worn the grey trousers to the point of needing to repair the crotch seam (yeah, that's how much I wear them), and I have also had a lot of occasion to wear the knit tops.  My long grey cardigan always gets compliments (which is somewhat surprising to me, but, you know, nice) and I have found my raincoat to be useful the few occasions I have had a chance to wear it.  Oddly, though the black dress is one of my favorite items from my challenge, I haven't found any occasions to wear it.  Something that needs to be remedied I think.  As far as non-sewing challenge items go (relatively few this year), I really love my Burda 03-2012-108 dress (pictured with the cardigan above), and I would love to make another.

I also really loved my skating costumes from this year, and wanted to highlight them as well:

I love my figure dress - it was exactly the elegant look I was going for.

My dance dress - possibly my favorite skating dress ever.

As I have been looking through this past year's sewing projects (especially from the sewing challenge) I have been pondering if and what I would want to do for a challenge next year.  On the one hand I am tempted to go back to totally random and capricious sewing, but on the other hand I have been very inspired this year by the various sewing challenges and SWAP plans of other sewing bloggers.  I feel that sewing what I want when I want is fun, but sewing with some sort of wardrobe plan in place is probably more useful for me right now, since I am trying to break away from the jeans and a hoodie uniform of the college student.  I feel like I have made a big step forward and improvement in my wardrobe and dress this year (due to a little guidance and a lot of inspiration from Tim Gunn), but I still have a ways to go overall.  With that in mind I have started making sewing plans for next year, which I am excited to reveal tomorrow!