I’m not only putting out the Welcome Mat for 2025, I’ve got my little hostess apron on and I’m inviting it inside for a nice cup of tea and a sit down – thats how thankful I am that 2024 IS OVER.
Without a doubt, 2024 has been the worst year of my entire life, and that’s including 2009 (where I was literally days away from death, had chemo, meningitis, spent 8 weeks in hospital, lost my hair, got countless infections, etc) and 2020 (where I spent 9 months shielding in a ~20 sq m cabin and couldn’t leave home for a total of 14 months). Both of these pale in comparison to the endless horror of being trapped in a body that doesn’t work, while watching it distort into some grotesque puddle in slow motion.
I do these Year in Review posts every year to try and celebrate the wins and find some joy and perspective in things that happened over the previous 12 months, and some years it’s harder than others. There were joys here, but every single one of them was hard-won, and only happened because I fought my own body to make it happen. Life is never easy (no matter what it appears on social media), but some years are particularly harder than what seems fair.
So with that in mind, let’s have a look back to see what joys we can uncover, eh?
(Click here to see a full-sized version of all the garments I sewed in 2024)
The Year in Stats
Garment types:
- 12 Tops
- 8 Bras or panties
- 8 Bottoms (trousers, skort or shorts)
- 7 Plushies
- 3 Accessories (waist pack, scrunchies & hat!)
- 1 Coat/cloak
This is probably my lightest sewing year in recent memory, mostly because I couldn’t sit upright for a good portion of it. But because I was still able to loom knit when lying down with my head propped up, I made 6 pairs of loom knitted socks, which is above average for the past few years.
Making more tops than anything else is pretty usual for me, and a lot of these were quick teeshirts to just cheer myself up. The bottoms aren’t a huge surprise, either, considering I went from a size 12 to a size 20 in 9 months thanks to Long Covid, so having a few trousers and shorts were a necessity, rather than a choice. I didn’t make a single dress this year, which is hardly surprising as I haven’t got anywhere to go, and they’re not as comfortable to wear in bed (but I do have one on the go now, partially because I only have one dress that still fits).
Pattern company breakdown:
- 6 FehrTrade
- 5 FibreMood
- 4 Named
- 3 Sophie Hines
- 3 Closet Core Patterns (all Pietras!)
- 1 each of: Cashmerette, Itch to Stitch, Burda magazine, Charm Patterns, StyleArc, Paper Theory, Jalie, Seamwork
I usually end up sewing more of my own patterns than anything else, but much of that is usually down to pattern development – which wasn’t the case this year. Most of these were down to needing underwear and wanting to sew more comfortable teeshirts (since I spend the vast majority of my days in bed). This also accounts for all 5 FibreMood patterns, too!
Big Business Things
Skiiiiip. 😭
But seriously, not only could I not work my day job (and was made redundant from that in May 😭), I couldn’t even sit up enough to work on patterns. And when I can’t exercise, I can’t test or develop new patterns. So it was no surprise that this year was a complete failure to do any work whatsoever.
However, there was one small highlight that had nothing to do with my ability to work – seeing our Lightspeed Leggings made by a contestant on the Great British Sewing Bee!
Favourite Makes
All that aside, there were some things I made this year that I absolutely loved!
The Wolfkiller Cloak! – I may not have had much occasion to wear it this winter (it’s been so warm!), but I utterly love this riduculously OTT coat and cloak. I’m really proud of the quality of the design, fabrics, and my execution of it, and it is absolutely my highlight of the entire year.
Birthday cats top – The Named Saraste Top is one of the few patterns I can still fit into from “my healthy body size”, so it felt like a relief to be able to just sew a TNT pattern with such a fun and lovely fabric and not have to worry about whether it would fit or not.
The bat plushies – I’m still not quite sure what possessed me to start sewing plushies for the first time in my 45 years on this planet, but I really enjoyed making these for all my vampire friends. They’re quick to make, use up scraps from my stash, and delight my friends. These are now spread all over the globe, but I’m glad I kept my first one for myself!
Barrel legged jeans – I never got great photos of these but I’m pleased with the quality of the topstitching here and I like that the shape is something different for me. I sewed them in such a way that I can take in the waist as I recover eventually, and of my three pairs of trousers, they’re the ones that feel more special than just utilitarian.
Duds!
The Named trousers, ugh – These were just a terrible idea from the start, really. I thought that the wrap waist would mean I could wear them at a variety of waist sizes but really they just looked awful, with crotch arrows being the most prominent feature. I literally only hemmed them so I could donate them to a charity shop.
Black linen Bob trousers – I love (and still wear!) my brown linen Bob trousers, and would absolutely make more, but the black linen I used in these was absolute trash. It wasn’t just thin, but actually disintigrated within a few months of wear, despite my best efforts to patch over patches. I’ve learned the hard way to only buy quality linen (Raystitch!!), even though it’s expensive!
3x Axis Tanks – This isn’t the fault of the pattern whatsoever, but it turned out that all three Axis tanks I made this year I can’t actually wear. 😫 With the two I made on holiday in February, the FOE had less stretch than the fabric so the underarms were too high and too tight to be comfortable (and I have no energy to fix them). With the one I made recently, the mesh has less stretch than I was expecting so it’s too tight overall. So all three are in storage along with the rest of my smaller clothes, awaiting a return to my healthy body.
Athletic Achievements
Uhh, skip.
(Seriously, I cannot state enough how much Long Covid has ruined my quality of life. I went from completing a 6.5hr, 107km Ultra Duathlon 2 weeks before Covid, to being unable to walk 5min to the corner shop, sit upright for an hour, or stand up to brush my teeth.)
Other Major Events
- The Maison Margiela SS24 couture show – In darkest February, when I needed it most, this show was a breathtaking ray of beauty. Whether you’re “into” fashion or not, its aesthetic and execution is something that cannot be ignored. And it also introduced me to one of my favourite singers of the year!
- Interview with the Vampire Season 2 watchalongs & sleepover – For seven Sundays in a row, my friends came over and we watched the new episode on our big projector screen. Then we’d eat and drink and discuss it for literally hours, joking about what we’d seen and speculating on what might come next. Then we followed it up with a sleepover weekend, watching all of season 1 back-to-back on Saturday, and season 2 on Sunday. When you’re chronically ill, you learn who your friends are, and the friends I’ve gained from this show have stood up for me, and bent over backwards to include me more than friends I’ve known for decades.
- Trips to Cornwall (Feb & Aug) and Brittany (July) – These weren’t the best holidays of my life, and there’s no escape or break or holiday or “day off” from being trapped in a body that doesn’t work, but it was at least nice to have something different to look at. I spent a good portion of these lying in a different bed, staring at a different wall, but at least there was some novelty in that.
- Patrick Wolf livestreamed gigs – For the third year running, I’ve paid a tenner a month to see one of my favourite artists perform a live streamed gig from his back garden studio. It continues to be the only gigs I can safely see, and something I look forward to every single month. I really, really wish more artists would take up his model.
Top media
I had a lot of time to consume media this year, and I know the amount in each category is a little eclectic, but I only wanted to include ones I really loved, and not just add some filler to make a nice, round number.
Top Albums:
- Paris Paloma “Cacophony”
- Douglas Dare “Omni”
- Lucky Love “I don’t care if it burns”
- Griff “Vertigo”
- Daniel Hart – Interview with the Vampire S2 soundtrack
- St Vincent “All Born Screaming”
- One True Pairing “Endless Rain”
- PHILDEL “Into the Woods”
The Paris Paloma album is miles and miles ahead of anything else I listened to this entire year. It utterly fused with my soul. I know every note of every song – they play in my head on repeat. The songs I initially dismissed as “too folky for me” ended up becoming some of my favourites. It’s simply phenomenal from start to finish.
Top Songs:
- Paris Paloma “last woman on earth”
- (Daniel Hart & Sam Reid) Lestat de Lioncourt “Long Face”
- Griff “Miss me too”
- Paris Paloma “my mind (now)”
- Douglas Dare “Mouth to Mouth”
- Daniel Hart “The Whole World Was Ready to Return”
- Lucky Love “I don’t care if it burns”
- Chappell Roan “Good Luck Babe”
- Sabrina Carpenter “Espresso”
Top TV:
- Interview with the Vampire (S2) (AMC/BBC iPlayer)
- Bad Sisters (S2) (Apple+)
- Girls 5Eva (s3) (Netflix)
- Mr Loverman (BBC iPlayer)
- Slow Horses (s4) (Apple+)
- Domino Day (BBC iPlayer)
- Mary & George (Sky)
- Fallout (Amazon Prime)
- What We Do In The Shadows (s6) (FX)
No points for guessing my top show of the year! But seriously, it wasn’t just me – it was at the top of a bunch of Year End lists, has a 98% score on Rotten Tomatoes, and is just incredible television. It’s been renewed for a third season (the S3 teaser trailer resulting in my number 2 song of the year?!), and doesn’t show any signs of slowing down (especially since the next book is nearly everyone’s favourite, including the cast and crew).
Top Films:
- Hundreds of Beavers
- Monkey Man
- Challengers
- Timestalker
- Crossing
Gigs I’ve had to miss due to (Long) Covid
- Raleigh Ritchie x2
- Patrick Wolf x2
- Chappell Roan
- Paris Paloma x2
- Florence + the Machine at BBC Proms
This was so tough. Even without the Long Covid meaning I can’t stand up for more than a song or two, being immunocompromised means that, even wearing an FFP3 mask, a crowded room with thousands of tightly-packed people all exhaling and singing is literally the most dangerous place I could be.
It’s still too unsafe for me to take a flight, take public transport, eat indoors at restaurants or drink indoors at bars, go to the theatre or the cinema, but somehow missing gigs from artists I desperately want to experience live hurts the most.
The Year Of…
Every year I like to pick a theme that sums up my year, and this year the word that kept coming to mind was “enduring”. I had the thought the other day that I’m not putting in any less effort now than when I was marathon training, cycling everywhere, doing core work and training for international track competitions. It’s just now ALL of that effort is hidden internally, being used to fight the virus(es) instead.
This split-second image of Lestat in the IWTV S3 teaser spoke more to my mood the entire year than anything else
My “Quote of the year” is equally bleak, but one that I instantly memorised from the first instant it appeared in a pre-season trailer. It resonated with me hard this year.
“Our life is shit. It’s been shit. It is shit. It’s gonna be shit again. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. No one’s watching, no one cares. A shit life beats no life.” – Louis de Pointe du Lac, Interview with the Vampire ep201
Things I’m looking forward to in 2025:
New albums from Patrick Wolf and Raleigh Ritchie, and the first Interview with the Vampire spin-off show, The Talamasca. Plus filming of season 3 of Interview with the Vampire, and getting some peeks from that from friends visiting the sets. Plus a hint that one of my favourite artists is playing a seated, outdoor gig that I might actually be able to attend??
And maybe, just maybe(??) feeling a bit better. I’m feeling hopeful about this one, but I can’t say much more about this yet.
Previous Roundups
If you’re curious to see how 2024 stacked up to previous years, you can have a look at previous roundups here:
2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, and 2007.