forestofglory

Here’s a round up of things I sewed in 2025! It was a good sewing year for me. This a lot of pictures so I divided it up into sections.

Clothing

This year I got back into sewing garments for myself. Here’s some of what I made. (I don’t seem to have taken pictures of everything)

Jacket!


And I made three of these tunics but I only found pictures of two of them



I also made several shirts for the kid, but again didn’t photo document them very well. But here’s one picture:

Doll Clothing

I sewed a lot of clothing for my 18 inch doll! Mostly Tang dynasty inspired hanfu. I used this project to learn more about hanfu and also pattern drafting. I drafted all the hanfu patterns using a book and I feel more confident about pattern drafting now. (Maybe not confident enough to draft something for me)

Here’s the first outfit I made:


Then I decided I wanted to make a round collar robe for that hufu/crossdressing girl look. I started by making a jacket -- it took several tries to get the pattern right









All those versions really paid off though because my first try and a robe went perfectly:



Then I made a reversible robe – I wanted to do that open collar look I’ve been seeing in dramas





And here’s the second lined robe I made


I also did Tang Dynasty girl outfit:



And in not hanfu doll clothing I altered a pattern so I could make my doll a matching tunic to mine

Quilts

I didn’t sew a lot of quilts in 2025 – I was working on other things. I did send two quilt tops to a friend to quilt and then finish those quilts though. Here some pictures:



I also sewed up a quilt top which I’d cut out all the pieces ages ago but then left sitting around for a while.

Here’s some in progress shots


And the finished quilt top :

I don’t have any specific goals for 2026 sewing, but I have several quilt tops in various stages of completion that I hope to work on. I also have another top for myself cut out, and some fun fabric set aside for other garment projects. And I have plenty of ideas for more doll clothing too!

Hi I haven't been here as much as I'd like. We had some damage to the house that caused a major disruption, and even though it's been fixed for a while I'm having trouble getting back to my usual routines and projects.

But that's not what I want to talk about! It's December, and every year for the last several years I've been doing a project called DecRecs in December where I rec on thing everyday for the month and encourage other people to rec stuff too. Recs get posted on Mastodon and this year for the first time BlueSky then every once in a while I round them up and post several days worth here.

So here are the 1st five days of recs!

Day 1
It's the first day of December and that means its time for #decRecs !

This year I want to focus on reccing things I discovered this year, not things I've recced a ton of times before, though I'm sure I'll include some old favorites.

I'm starting out with "This is it" a mulifandom Go /Baduk / Weiqi vid. This so much fun! I've been rewatching this everytime I scroll past it in my ao3 bookmarks and its a delight every time!

I love the variety of source material and the perfect timing!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/51767752

2:57 min, only music, subtitles available

Day 2
Today for #DecRecs I want to talk about barley tea! I used to get this all the time at my favorite Korean restaurant but I recently realized that I can make it at home! It's so good, cozy, a bit of nutty flavor, very warming in the cold!


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I have been sewing a lot recently! It's really fun!

( many pictures )

9)Today rec for #DecRecs is Tiny Witch With a Tiny Familiar (by still unrelieved creator). The colors! The use of leaves!(CN: bugs) https://archiveofourown.org/works/60962314 (H/t donutsweeper)

10) For #DecRecs today I want to rec sticky rice pu'erh! One of of my favorite and frequently drunk teas!
It's pu'erh made with an herb called Nuo Mi Xiang (糯米香) -- which translates to sticky rice stent. It gives the deep earthiness of the pu'erh a bit of brightness and sweetness.
The one I'm drinking right now is this https://yunnansourcing.com/products/rice-scent-and-ripe-pu-erh-tea-mini-bricks? but I've tried several different versions and they've all been great!

11)Today's #DecRecs is The Women Who Ruled China: Buddhism, Multiculturalism, and Governance in the Sixth Century by Stephanie Balkwill, a really fascinating book about Empress Dowager Ling of the Northern Wei, women and power during her lifetime and the ways traditional historiography has failed women.

It's open access and you can get an ebook for free here: https://www.ucpress.edu/books/the-women-who-ruled-china/paper

12)Today is the 12th day of #DecRecs and I'm reccing Twig + Tale sewing patterns!

I just think that their patterns are so cute and comfy! I love their commitment to gender neutral language for their patterns, especially because some crafting spaces are very conservative. And I think all the different animal designs are just so much fun!

I haven't made all of their patterns but the ones I have made have been great, and I've made those repeatedly

https://www.twigandtale.com/

I made some different Tang dynasty doll hanfu same shirt but I made a different skirt and added a jacket. I'm thinking about try and Hufu/cross dressing look next but I'm not sure how the collar is supposed to look. (I also might try making something me sized at some point)

Here are the last five days of my DecRecs:

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For the last day of DecRecs I'm taking requests. Reply to this and I will rec you a thing! You can request something if you want or I can do my best to pick something I think you will like!

I finally finally finished the second summer top I was sewing for the kid yesterday! It's been "almost done" for about two weeks and I was feeling very frustrated with it, so its relief to have finished it.

Next I'm going to bind the chicken quilt. Which is the last step I need to do to finish that.

The shirt pattern that I make for the kid all the time has adult sizes as well. The pattern company an had a sale last month and I bought the adult size range. I'm planning to try making one for myself! I've had a weird block about sewing things for me, but I'm hoping trying a very familiar pattern will help.

I couldn't resist buying some very cute fabric with books and cats and I also bought few other things I'd been eyeing. So I got fun fabric mail yesterday

So in the beginning of January I decided not to post a set of monthly goals here, something that I'd been doing for years but was feeling overwhelming. I've been meaning to write a bit about how that's going.

I generally have goals about writing, sewing, classical Chinese, and holidays and events.

I did a fair amount of writing in January. I'm still tracking how many days I write (A day counts if I write at least three sentences) and I wrote on 18 days last month and posted a 2.5k nonfiction rec list. February isn't off to a good start writing wise as I've been sick a lot but am slowly working on another post of Lady Business

Sewing has also been up and down due to hand pain. I finished another kid shirt (picture) and played around with two new quilt tops. Also I did a craft exchange with a friend where I traded a quilt top for having a quilt quilted! It looks so good! Currently I am very slowly working on a short sleeved top for the kid. I've been having a lot of wrist pain the last couple of weeks so I can't go very fast.

Classical Chinese has not been going very well. I've been doing my electronic flash cards everyday but not making progress in my textbooks. I'm running into the difficulties of studying a dead language, where I really want things to read that aren't my text book. Also I still need to learn so much vocabulary!

So I think that not having monthly goals hasn't made a big difference in how much I'm getting done. And I am really liking the freedom to just sew things with less concern about finishing on time. So I don't plan to go back to posting monthly goals. But maybe I'll try to post a bit more about my various projects in other contexts. I do like talking about them

Well December is over, time to look at how I did at my goals for the month.

1)Write fic or Lady Business posts on 15 days.
Nope only 9 days. Once I posted Suibain Reads I really wasn't feeling inspired to write more fic and the last part of the month was hectic

2) Finish the second shirt
Done! (Picture via Instagram)

3) Sew some reusable gift bags
Also Done!(Picture via Instagram)

4) Rec a thing everyday
Done, check out my #DecRecs tag to see what I recced

5) Winter Break and Winter Holidays
Today is New Years (observed) and tomorrow the kid goes back to school. Break has been a lot of people being sick, but we did mange a few outside expeditions, and a couple of gatherings. I had people over for latkes twice, and we also did some Christmas stuff with family

6) Finish the intro section in An Introduction to Literary Chinese
Nope. I manged to finish lesson 7, but I got very stuck on lesson 8 and decided to take a break until I am a bit better rested.


In December at least one member of my household was sick everyday of the month. It was exhausting even though I myself wasn't sick very much. So starting the new year feeling rather blagh

I'd normally write up some goals for the coming month here, but I'm feeling overwhelemed. The last couple of months I've been struggling with setting right sized goals. So I'm going to not post any goals for this month an see how I feel about it.

Somehow its December already. So its time to look back on my goals for last month and set some new goals.

Here are the goals I set for November:

1) Thanksgiving and Thanksgiving Break
Thanksgiving went really well! I was able to invite my parents a few local friends and I got to feed people! I also did a good job of enlisting help with cooking and not over doing things with my wrist. The kid was sadly sick for all of her break so we didn't do any expeditions.

2)Write fic or Lady Business posts on 15 days.
I wrote on 16 days, mostly on my reviews of fake books fic which is now around 3k words, and still very fun to write.

3) Sew two long sleeve shirts for the kid
I sewed one and got started on the second. I keep over estimating how much sewing I can do in a month. here is a picture of the shirt I did finish.

4)Complete another classical Chinese lesson, stretch goal: complete a second one
I did great at this I finished lesson 13 in A New Practical Primer of Literary Chinese then did lesson 6 in An Introduction to Literary Chinese and even a bit of lesson 7. Switching back more beginner lessons was nice because suddenly things where a lot easier, which means that I've learned something!

November had lot going on. Our house was painted which was very noisy, the kid was sick a lot, my mother in law had cataract surgery. I deliberately set myself smaller goals than I sometimes do because I knew that the painting and the surgery would make things more difficult. However I did succeed at my scaled back goals!

December is always a busy month so I'm going to keep setting scaled back goals for this month. My December goals are:

1)Write fic or Lady Business posts on 15 days.
Keeping it a smallish number of writing days again

2) Finish the second shirt

3) Sew some reusable gift bags
Since my wrist isn't so good traditional wrapping paper has been difficult for me, so I thought I would make some drawstring bags to but presents in. I have lots of good fabric for this!

4) Rec a thing everyday
I love recing stuff and social media has been a bit quieter so I'm going to try to rec a thing every day in December. (Where a thing can be fanfic, profic, non-fiction, visual media, tea, sewing patterns, something else I haven't thought of yet.) I plan to cross post between Twitter and Mastodon and use the tag #DecRecs.

I posted about this yesterday and several people are going to join in and rec things! I'm very excited! (I have already bought two ebooks and added several things to my marked for latter)

5) Winter Break and Winter Holidays
The kid has two weeks off school, and there are several holidays happening this month

6) Finish the intro section in An Introduction to Literary Chinese
This is lesson 7 which I've started on and lesson 8, so not a huge amount. I think I can do it!

I hope you all have a wonderful December!