The general plan for 2012 and a finished UFO

Hello friends! A very belated Happy New Year to you all. I hope you've all been well over the festive season and had wonderful times with your friends and family. Mr CraftyAdy, the kids and myself stayed at home and thoroughly enjoyed the Christmas break. The kids have been off school since 16 December and they return to school tomorrow having enjoyed the long break. Mr CraftyAdy and I were off work for 9 days (not including weekends). It was the longest break I've had all year and I very much needed it.

I spent some of my time during the break doing some sewing and enjoyed that a lot. I decided that one of my 'resolutions' for 2012 is to do more sewing - specifically using the stash of fabric I have accumulated over the past couple of years. In no specific order, I thought I could commit to the following resolutions:
1) do more sewing and use the CraftyAdy fabric stash
2) try to pick up crochet again and actually learn to do it properly
3) re-cover my table-top ironing board
4) find all UFOs (Un-Finished Objects) and finish them.

On that note, on New Year's Day whilst looking for something in a storage box, I found 6 squares of fabric in a little plastic wallet. Two 15-inch squares of brown printed upholstery-grade fabric, two 15-inch squares of a red lining fabric and two odd-sized small bits of the brown fabric. I must have cut them out sometime ago intending to make a bag from them and just never did. I imagined the smaller pieces would have been intended as pockets. I found some black quilting cotton in my stash and put them altogether to make this bag for myself. The black strips across the body of the bag are strips of grosgrain ribbon.



I think originally I might have been intending to make a basket-bag like the first one pictured in this blog post which has a magnetic closure. I decided I actually wanted a zipped closure instead. So I used the odd-sized bits of brown fabric to form the gusset zip closure in the top of this bag.



I like the bright red lining and thought I could omit the pockets. The handles and the inside facing were cut from a long quarter (as opposed to fat quarter) of black fabric and the silver rings are actually flat split rings.



I've been using this bag for work this week and it's a nice size for me. It felt really nice making such a positive start in 2012. Last year's resolution was focused on stash-busting of the paper variety and I thought it went really well and hopefully will continue into this year too. The theme of stash-busting continues this year with the focus on fabric.

What are your resolutions for this year, friends? Is there anything in particular you wish to achieve, hope to learn or want to make this year? Whatever your resolutions, I wish you every success and may 2012 bring you lots of wonderful things.