Blog Hop

Thank you to Sue from fadanista for the nomination for the blog hop. I love seeing all the new things that Sue has been making. She sets such a fast sewing pace that I can't always keep up with her new makes! I've been enjoying reading other people's blog hop posts, and seeing a bit about what makes them tick.

Always inquisitive about things like this, I did a bit of research to try and find where this blog hop all started, and for the most part have come up with other bloggers saying that they have done a bit of research trying to find out where it all started. Example.

I'm not sure if it started as the same blog hop, but I found lots of quilters participating in the Around the World Blog Hop (even with it's own button you can add!), some posts with slightly different questions to the ones that I will be answering here. One post suggested if you want to know where it started that you go back through the nominations and find the start. Which is what I started to do, but gave up after a while. My computer had so many tabs open that I thought it might rebel and crash on me, and I'd only gone back about a month!

The quilters questions seem to be aimed more at the creative process of their quilting, whereas the sewing blog hop seems to be about the blog itself.

Anyway, enough about that, I'm sure you're much more interested in my answers.

1. Why do you write?

I first got the idea to start writing my own blog while catching up on some reading through my sister's blog. I decided I wanted a blog before I knew what I was going to write about! I just knew that I wanted to share something with the world! Sewing seemed like the obvious answer, but since most of my sewing is usually client related, I didn't know if I would have enough of my own sewing related things to write about.

I settled on the title of Obsessive Creativeness as I tend to jump into new crafts, or types of sewing, get really obsessed about it, then jump onto the next thing that takes my fancy. (Just ask my husband, it drives him crazy!)

Originally I was writing more about the odd cooking adventure or craft activity, but my blog is mostly centred around sewing and sewing related topics now. It is also handy as another creative outlet for things that I'm sewing for myself, so don't make it to my website, and when I have more to say about something than a few lines in a Facebook post. It is also handy to direct clients to. I wrote a post earlier this year about the process of making a made to measure dress that I can direct potential clients to so that they know what to expect during the process of making their dress. If a potential client was so inclined, they could also get more of a feel for who I am before they meet me if they did a bit of reading of my blog.

2. How is your blog different to others of the same genre?

I guess I'm not that different to a lot of other sewing blogs. I love to talk about sewing, and blogging gives me an outlet full of like minded people. You know, people who won't switch off as soon as you start talking about seam finishes and zippers! One thing you won't find a lot of here though, is a review of commercial patterns. Since I began studying fashion design back in 2005, I realised that I didn't need to buy patterns to make the clothes that I wanted, and better yet, I learnt how to make things exactly how I wanted them to be from the start. I occasionally sew clothes for clients from commercial patterns, but find that by the time you've made a few adjustments to the design, and fitted it properly, in most cases you may as well have spent that time making a pattern from scratch using the client's measurements.

I'm not saying that I'll never buy a commercial pattern again, and I have been known to download some free patterns from the internet. With the changes that my body has gone through since having children though, I know that after buying a pattern I would need a lot of changes to make it fit.

I don't know if this makes my blog different, but I write a lot about my thought process in coming up with the patterns that I use. Other blogs will tell you about alterations they made to a pattern - a FBA here, a sway back adjustment there, but I'll talk about how I made yet another change to my custom bra pattern, and how I intend to change it in the future.

3. What are you working on right now?

Given that my favourite denim shorts just ripped under one of the back pockets today, I should be making new shorts ASAP, however, I've already got a few things in the works right now, and am really hoping I will get the time to finish them and much more by the end of the year. As I finish these, I'll link them up too!

In order of how complete they are:

UFO dress. This is something that my husband started to make for me between children, but gave up on when he couldn't work out how to finish one of the details, so probably at least 6 years ago now. It's time to finish it before summer really hits! If the weather so far this spring is anything to go by, it's going to be a scorcher. And I'm almost done!

Little French Jacket. I started work on this well before winter hit, and now the opportunity to wear it has gone for another year. Oh well, I guess that means I have longer to finish it?  Perhaps I should just get it done. After all, I have since bought more fabric for another one, so with any luck I'll have two new jackets for next winter!

Striped Top. This will be from my leftover stripe fabric that I made this winter dress from. Thanks to a water mark down the side, I bought more than I needed, so there's heaps of fabric left over. I'm going to use a pattern that I made a few years ago, but change the lines a little now that I know the exact fit of that style. I made the original top before I started blogging, so it doesn't have it's own post, but photos of it have been featured in a few other posts.

Black bra. I've been talking about doing this for a while, but have yet to really start on it. It will be the next bra that I make, and I really should get onto it, because I'm already planning a couple of other bras after this one!

4. What is your writing process?

I generally start writing a post as soon as I start work on something, or sometimes when I start thinking about doing something. I take WIP photos as I go, and add them to the post when I get a chance, editing and re-writing whole sections as I go. It's not uncommon for me to have drafts of 14 posts on the go at the same time. I'm sure they won't all see the light of day, a couple of them have been there for more than a year!

When I've finished a project, it can take a while to get around to taking final photos. I use my phone for most photos, so I usually need to wait til I can get someone else to take them. I don't have a tripod or remote for my camera, it's getting a bit old, and doesn't take the best quality of photo. I also prefer the convenience of my phone automatically uploading to my computer via dropbox.

In case you haven't noticed, I do have a tendency to ramble when I write, and go off on tangents which I generally put in parentheses. That's because I write how I think, and my thoughts tend to go off all over the place. I think it's a side effect of working by myself. I have only myself to talk to all day, and I end up with thoughts spilling out all over the place, and one of the places that they end up is here on my blog.

Nomination

I am sending the baton back to Perth from whence it came, and nominating Megan from Meggipeg. I'm looking forward to seeing if she still has her Little French Jacket as one of the things that she's currently working on! Over to you Megan.....