Finny and Donk's Sewing Adventure

Dear Donk and Sewalongers,

I'm back from my *gallivanting* as someone so kindly put it, and ready to deal the dish on the 2008 sewalong so that y'all can get your machines back out and put your energies to good use.

I have, by the way, appreciated your gentle coaxing to get the hell off my dead ass and come up with The New Book for 2008 OH MY GOD WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM HELLO, so thank you. Sometimes I need a swift kick to get moving.

Business, let's get down to business...

First things first, to close off 2007, go check out Donk's post for the Nov/Dec Dealer's Choice winner. I'm very impressed with you all for not snagging the simplest patterns from the book and going easy. Because that is really what I usually do, and frankly it makes me a little ashamed of myself when I see how ambitious and fabulous you all are.

Second thing, with regard to InStitches, Amy Butler and all of your awesomeness - Craftzine's blog (which, by the way, if you haven't looked through an issue of CRAFT: magazine yet - go now, it's tits) is hosting an Amy Butler Sew Inspired contest for those who have created a bag inspired by Amy and her designs. You can read all about it here, but we thought it would be some great extra mileage for those of you who made really hot bags (hello, quilted patchwork bag heroes) and want to flaunt them and perhaps win some more Amy stuff. We know you are all very talented and we want you to win. So go check it out, yes? You have till 2/29.

Okokok, for 2008...

After careful consideration via a very long email string (thank you Gmail for stacking my emails so neatly, wuv you) the Donk and I chose Simple Gifts to Stitch for our 2008 sew along. (Check comments for a deal through Buy.com - thanks Katie!)

There were a few considerations here, specifically a lot of you all voted for it (yay democracy), we thought a good portion of the patterns looked promising and then there also wasn't a hundred Flickr pools already dedicated to fawning over it, unlike most of the other choices. Plus, it doesn't involved quite as much quilting and patchworking as *some other* books, which I enjoy.

You recall my bouts with these techniques and their horrifying results. I'm sorry, I'm just not ready to go back into the water with the patchwork measuring yet. I'm just not.

SO - we hope you're excited to venture into uncharted territory with this book and don't get all "what about the book *I* voted for??" and what not because we think this book looks pretty rad. And, hey, if it turns out to suck ass, we should be the ones to decide right here. And then you can all yell at me and I can be punished with a hundred quilting projects. Seems fair, right?

As for the first project, we're going to put a two month time limit on this one so you have time to curse my name and then go get the book (I hope, yes?) and then do the project. So, the deadline will be 2/28 and the project is the Button Scarf. And, as always, be as creative or as MUST DO IT EXACTLY AS THE PATTERN SAYS (me) as you like and then go post your photos to our new 2008 Flickr pool.

Oh, and you'll notice that "Finny and Donk's Sewing Adventure" keeps cropping up, and that is with good reason because we are renaming our sewalong for longevity. As we realized, InStitches ~Along wasn't going to work what with our non-InStitches book and all, so we've given ourselves a new name and face (that thing at the top of the post, yes) so that maybe MAYBE we can keep this up for a while in the event that 2008 goes well and y'all don't hate us for picking The Unknown Book and still want to keep going in *gasp* 2009 or something.

Anyhoo, just so you know, the Finny in Finny and Donk's Sewing Adventure is me and Donk is Kelli and the adventure will come when we're trying to pin-tuck linen for a table runner (hint) and we run out of swears. Ok, so maybe this only happens to me, but still *adventurous*.

If you're interested, we also have a new badge to declare our Sewing Adventureness (refer to top of post), and you're welcome to grab it and display it on your blogs for all to see. If you want a higher resolution copy for tattooing purposes, just shoot me an email and I'll be happy to oblige.

One last piece of business - the Rad Surprise that I boasted about last year that was supposed to be [RIGHT HERE] is a bit delayed, so forgive me please. As soon as its radness is present, I will put it up and let you know and then sit back in awe (hopefully).

Ok, phew, I think that's it. I have a burning desire to summarize everything with a bulleted list, but I'm trying to surpres my urges to do anal retentive things that make other people go, "OMG, really? I think she's crazy.", so I'm not going to. I will have to rely on my strategic bolding techniques and hope that y'all are careful readers.

Looking forward to another year of inventing proprietary sewing swears with all of you.

xo
Finny