Red Cedar
More apocalypse, less angst
Post #1975: Five (six) favourite makes from 2014
This might very well be my favourite make of 2014 – a Dala horse, hand sewn for my 3-year-old (horse-crazy) niece Grace. While she is much too young to appreciate such an endeavour – I will point out to you that the saddle is English-paper-pieced hand-piecing and took me about 8 hours to do… but that’s not my favourite part. What I fell in love with is the embellished “straps” crafted from felt, ribbon, buttons and red embroidery thread. Something about that piece makes this little treat all the more lovable to me.
The pattern for this came from Love Patchwork and Quilting out of the UK – same folks who publish Mollie Makes and a host of other great magazines for makers.
2014 was a pretty good year for making things all around – despite the fact that work and other things (like cabin-building) have kept me very busy. I haven’t always been good about posting the handmade things here, unfortunately, as it wasn’t a really great year for blogging and I often just threw photos up on Facebook instead of logging in here. (Part of that was related to a firewall issue at work that made it difficult to post photos to my wordpress posts – this seems to have been resolved recently).
A few of my other favourite makes from the year are posted below – these are the items that I fell in love with – but not an exhaustive list of them. As I winnow away at my disappointment at not being “perfect” in my hand work (because I am not, will never be, don’t need to be) I find a great deal of enjoyment in most of the articles I complete. Probably the area where I feel the least satisfied in the last year is on the clothing front. I just didn’t give myself enough space to make clothing which requires nitpicking with sizing and patterns – and thus aside from one sweater and a tank top, most of the garments were pretty forgettable.
So what were my top five makes from 2014 aside from the Dala horse?
There are, of course, many things that took much time and did not make it up here today (like the lace table runner I spent four months crocheting) – and it’s not because they are lesser projects. Just that some things catch me with a particular appreciation – and they do tend to be the things I use everyday – the marriage of utility and aesthetics striking a deeper chord in me. I feel very lucky that I fell into this form of hobby almost ten years ago (spring of 2005 to be exact) – something I never could have envisioned that has brought me a more comforting home and a more aesthetic life.
Happy New Year to all of you! I encourage you to find beauty and new projects in 2015 – light in a sometimes dark world. xo
Red Cedar 
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