Catching up with Amy Jolley
Hello, MilspoFAN Community! It’s great to be back to write this guest post. I want to share with you all what I have been up to the past year and what creative projects I completed and what I have coming up in the future.
I seem to have many creative ideas swirling around in my brain all the time. I really must pick and choose which ones that I want to move forward on. At the beginning of this year, I sat down at my sewing machine a wrote a list of new projects that I wanted to complete. Bear in mind, I also had plenty of projects that needed to be completed as well. Since last year’s post, I had grand plans for projects that I was inspired by. For example, I wanted to sew myself a Rambler Skirt, a long dress, a meditation pillow, and a small, themed quilt. But I realized that I did not have the band width the complete these in-depth projects nor the time and I felt very dissatisfied with my level of sewing experience in sewing clothes. I have such a desire to learn how to sew clothes and found myself unable to read a pattern. I guess, abstract ideas have always come easy to me, but following a paper pattern or online pattern, even an easy one felt so daunting. I learn best by doing and watching others do projects. I often will go over to YouTube to search for a project that I am having difficulty with so I can have a visual. This time around I couldn’t find videos that I liked well enough to learn from. So, I ended up not doing the skirt, the dress, or the mediation pillow. I felt defeated.
My brain has been very preoccupied with raising twins and it’s already overloaded with just being a mom and the continuous responsibilities of running a household. Learning something brand new was just not in the cards for me right now. It was important for me to take a step back. I decided to scratch all the new projects and start over with projects that come easy to me and use up some fabric from my stash. During the Christmas holiday I took up embroidery again and completed this stocking for one of my twins. This was an easy project that took just about a week to complete.
Between life’s big events this past year, I was able to start and finish a few more. For one, my twin boys turned 1. I made most of the decorations for their birthday like the ribbon garlands and their birthday crowns. Both super easy and quick projects. I really enjoyed sewing the sweet crowns and they looked adorable on my children.
To keep up with this momentum I decided to use up quilt blocks previously made for a quilt that I never finished.
Two table runners were the result and I gifted them to my friends. I love sewing for others and seeing these gifts in their houses.
I managed to squeeze in these projects while my twins napped and late at night when the house was asleep. Batik fabric was used for the pumpkins and it’s real eye-catching.
My husband and I loving living on the island of Oahu and enjoying the sunshine year around. We moved again into a different house, this time with central A/C and it is wonderful! In preparation for this move I packed up my sewing machine and all my craft supplies myself. As we are taking our time getting settled, I haven’t completed any sewing projects. Although our house is now 2 story, and my twin boys are 16 months I am staying busy caring for them and carrying them up and down the stairs. I managed to squeeze my sewing machine into the corner of our guest bedroom, and I plan to sew when the twins sleep. Two and a half hour naps are golden!
During the beginning of March, I took a class on resin pouring which was quite fun. Below is the cutting board pour I completed. This was challenging because the room where the class was held was warm which caused the resin to harden faster than expected. I had to work quickly with my color pouring and heat gun use to smooth out the air bubbles across the surface. The finished product turned out beautiful.
Future projects that I would like to do include recovering the patio furniture in our backyard with a tropical theme and sewing an alphabet book for my kids. I would also like to visit the Honolulu Museum of Art for inspiration and possibly take a class / workshop in Fiber Arts like weaving. My husband will be working longer hours this next year so I’m not too sure that I will get much creative time in like I am hoping. But when I do, it will be in small spurts in-between all the other life stuff. We all love to be outdoors which we plan to do a lot more this next year. I’ve realized that everything is a phase when raising children. I sometimes long for the days when I had so much alone time on my hands that I could create what I wanted when I wanted. But for now, I enjoy my greatest creation, my children. Maybe one day, we can make things together and I can teach them all that I know. Even though this phase is hard sometimes and all consuming, it won’t last forever. There will always be small pockets of creative time to fit in and things to make and I look forward to that.
I can be found on Instagram