A move, exciting news and what to expect around here in 2018…

Dear readers,

 

The last quarter of the year just seem to have been on fast-forward. Life has been busy at Tidbits HQ.  The main reason behind my silence is that I traveled to France for holidays (Yes, I saw the Dior exhibit. Yes, it is absolutely amazing!!), came back to New York and was then learned that I would be moving back to Haiti (on Thanksgiving weekend…) less than 2 months later. A Things were hectic. I had break my lease, sell all my furniture in New York, organize the shipment of the rest of my belongings (aka the sewing room), find a place to leave in Haiti and start my new job! I’m going to miss my friends, the Garment District, my nice apartment and the City in general, but I’m also really glad to be back. Haiti is a beautiful country and I managed to avoid the freezing New York winter!

The Paris Christian Dior Exhibit I visited in September

As things are finally starting to slow down, I started writing this post 3 weeks ago. I initially thought that I could write some more before the end of the year, but that quickly became unrealistic. So I figured that I may as well make it an end of the year kind of post. Currently, my sewing room is in a container somewhere in the port of Port-au-Prince and I’m trying to arrange for customs clearance and delivery, right between Christmas and New Year. This is going to be fun… But in the mean time, I am completely restless! Without sewing to keep myself busy once the little human is asleep, I just don’t know what to do with myself.

I’m particularly impatient because several deadlines coming up. Last summer, I started contributing to the print magazine Sew News! I always wanted to write more formally about sewing. I even have a secret-not-so-secret dream of writing a real book one day, which is a bit weird, considering how long it took me to be comfortable writing this blog! My book fantasy is a topic for another day, but I figured that writing articles for a print publication would be good practice and a fun thing to do. So when I heard this episode of the While She Naps podcast, I decided to be brave and I sent Sew News an email pitching some article ideas and asking to be added to their contributor calls. I was so surprised and thrilled when Amanda, the Editor of Sew News, not only expressed interest in some ideas, but also mentioned that she was already following me on Instagram! After some back and forth, we firmed up on 2 submissions, for which I have sent back my texts already (one of them included  samples and there were some mad sewing nights). I’m now working on 3 more articles with a sample each. I can hardly believe it…I managed to take some in-progress pictures like the 2 above. I’ll share more details once they are published! I think the first piece will be in the March/April issue and I CANNOT WAIT!!

Just Patterns – Yasmeen Skirt

Pushing myself to be more involved in the sewing community was one of my motivations when I started Just Patterns with Eira this year, and it’s one of the most rewarding aspects of running an independent pattern activity. Since releasing the first pattern back in January, there has been so many great interactions with sewists and fellow bloggers. Talking about Just Patterns, we just released our fifth pattern, the Yasmeen Skirt. It’s one of the garments hanging in Eira’s closet and that made me repeatedly beg her to start the pattern business with me so I’m particularly happy about this release! I sewed my own sample of the skirt in a blush color linen and hemmed it to wear with flat sandals for a casual/resort vibe which I think will work well for me here. Unfortunately it’s in my shipment, so I can’t show more than the picture below with Eira adjusting my sample on me! We have already mapped out our next 3-4 pattern releases, so Just Patterns will continue in 2018, despite us no longer being in the same country.

On the blog side, I am coming to terms with the fact that I probably won’t be able to post to post everything that I sew, even if my productivity is not that great. And maybe it’s not a bad thing. I’m realizing that I enjoy more discussing with you what is going on in the sewing community and how we feel about our handmade garments rather than what I sewed. I’m not saying that there won’t be finished garment posts anymore, because otherwise the blog would feel like an empty shell. But, maybe it’s just a matter of acknowledging that it hasn’t been about the clothes for a while now!

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A post shared by Maria Martimo (@maria_martimo)

It  also helped me figuring out how I want to structure content between the blog and my Instagram account. I fell in love with Maria Martimo’s Instagram Account (as well as with her impeccable sewing, and taste!). She sticks to the same structure for every project: a picture of fabric/notions introducing the next project, some construction pictures and a couple of pictures of the final garment. I decided to  shamelessly copy her strategy for the below Stephanie Skirt I sewed recently (with a gorgeous wool/cashmere coating from Mood!) and the verdict is: I loved it. It brings cohesion to my feed, and gives me the opportunity to discuss sewing techniques. I’ll try to post in that format from now on until, you know, I change my mind again…

Just Patterns Grey Wool Stephanie Skirt (Unblogged)

Sometimes, I feel like every other post here has me questioning the very fact of writing a sewing blog. And yet, Tidbits just celebrated its 5th anniversary. This is quite incredible to me considering my bad record at any documentation habit. I never thought that I would actually make it that long, so I spent  time reflecting on why I managed to keep the blog running and I think I have the answer: it’s you! No matter how much time past in between 2 posts, you were always around to welcome me back and engage, so I want to say a huge thank you!

I hope you are all having a peaceful end of year and I look forward to hearing your thoughts about what 2018 has in store for the sewing world!