Top 5 of 2025!

Happy New Year! I'm back to blogging after a little holiday break. It was a lovely relaxing time to eat and doze and perhaps even sew a bit ;) But to cap off the year, and start a new one, I wanted to look back over my 2025 sewing and see what I liked about it. 

What were my favourite makes of 2025? For the last few years, I have put together a Top Five post of my faves -- it's a good way to see what worked and why, and what to try next! 

Without further ado, here are my fave projects of the last year: 

Calcifer Dress - this is a Celeste Dress by Itch to Stitch, a repeated pattern for me. I made this fun dress from a sheet in my stash as part of my Literary Sewing Circle round featuring Howl's Moving Castle, and I really feel it hit the target! 

Milou Dress by Fabrics-store.com - hmm, another dress made from a sheet in my faves for the year! This one was made for a bunch of challenges and I really loved the colour and fun styling options. 

Burda 121-11-23 - this is the first thing I made myself in 2025 and I love it. It's comfy, I love the 80s vibe and it has great pockets too. 

Simplicity 8964 (Glass Room Blouse) - this is another project I did for the spring round of the Literary Sewing Circle! We were reading All the Things We Leave Behind by Riel Nason, and this fabric was perfect for the theme. It's a good fit and so colourful. 

Burda 112-01-2020 - This is the last thing I made this year! It's a surprise fave, since I was just testing the pattern out in some thrifted fabric. But it worked out beautifully and the fabric is just right. A great pattern. 

My bottom 5 -- well, really 3 -- are thumbs down from me almost entirely because of fit. I was underwhelmed by the Style Arc Ines Dress -- bad fit and fabric is too polyesterish to be comfortable. Then, the Terrace Top I made from a wonderfully soft tablecloth just doesn't fit well, the neckline is too high. Should I fix it or give it away? Haven't decided yet. 

And the McCalls 8501 Sarong Dress was fun to make, and I adore the fabric. But the fit is weird, the skirt pulls uncomfortably. Maybe because I added pockets or maybe because the fabric is the wrong weight for this pattern. But I want to reuse the fabric for something else because I love it. 

Overall, not too bad this year with wins and losses. 

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I also took a look at my year of sewing and compiled some interesting stats. I only made 15 items in 2025.  That's a lot less than in previous years. There was a mix of 6 indie, 7 big four, and 2 Burda. 

I only reused two patterns, the Terrace by Liesl & Co and the Celeste by Itch to Stitch. And Simplicity was the highest number of patterns, at 4. Then Burda with two, and 1 each from Vogue and Butterick, and indies Liesl & Co, Sew Liberated, Marilla Walker, Itch to Stitch, StyleArc and Fabrics-store.com. 

As for fabrics, 9 projects were made from the stash, 5 from new-to-me fabrics (some for collaborations) and then 1 refashion. I really didn't get a lot of sewing done, but I did buy a lot of fabric... so I guess that means that 2026 should be a low-buy, high sewing kind of year! We'll see if I can manage it. I want to sew more, but had some sewing slumps this year due to some extreme busy times at work with lots more responsibilities. Hopefully I can balance all that out to get myself more sewing time once more. 

I have lots of plans for things I want to make. Hoping that 2026 brings them to fruition!