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2020 Year In Review

2020 has been a historic year. In addition to the start of the covid-19 pandemic, there were the Australian Bush Fires, Black Lives Matters protests, Space-X’s successful launch of their Dragon Crew capsule to the International Space Station, and the 40th anniversary of the Mount St. Helen’s eruption. In this post, I’m going to review the most important things I learned small business-wise, my best/most useful sewing tips/skills and my favorite projects of 2020. I’ll also give you a heads up on my plans for the new year.

Small Business

The most important thing I learned in 2020 from a small business perspective has been how to make more effective Pinterest pins. I’ve been following some of the bloggers whose courses I took in 2019. Key concepts I’ve learned include the difference between a Pinterest image that contains a blog post’s title and one that drives readers to your website.

Sewing Skills/Tips

The most useful sewing skill I mastered in 2020 was how to make my own piping. Before one can master piping, one must learn continuous bias strip. If you’d like to learn these skills, check out my posts on continuous bias strips and piping. I even used some of my new piping to sew a summer sun hat.

Pinterest image for "Sewn By Tanya Project Review | Reversible Sun Hat by The Spruce Crafts"
Sewn By Tanya Project Review | Reversible Sun Hat by The Spruce Crafts

My best sewing tip of 2020 is a ruler holder for 2” wide by 18” long rules. Mine is clear and before I sewed a holder for it, I was always losing it. It didn’t fit in my sewing basket and having to look for it in a wide drawer wasn’t working well either. Now I truly have a place for everything and so long as everything is in it’s place, I can always find my sewing ruler. If you’d like to sew a ruler holder for yourself, check out my tutorial here:

Pinterest image for "Sewn By Tanya Sewing tutorial | Weighted Ruler Holder"
Sewn By Tanya Sewing tutorial | Weighted Ruler Holder
Favourite Projects

I love hiking and camping so it may not be a surprise that my favourite sewing project of 2020 is my YAMA Bug Shelter. I had planned to update my blog posts with some summer photos of the shelter in use, but my trip was canceled. That being said, it think the shelter is a great design and it provides plenty of room for a solo sleeper. It’s light weight also makes it a good option for backpacking trips. It wasn’t my first time sewing a camping/backpacking shelter, but I enjoyed the sewing process a lot more than I recall for my first shelter. You can read more about my first shelter and sewing my experience sewing the YAMA Bug Shelter here:

Pinterest image for "Sewn By Tanya Project Review | Yama Bug Shelter"
Sewn By Tanya Project Review | Yama Bug Shelter

A close second is the silk pillowcases. I use one almost every night and they really do reduce bedhead. I still can’t tell whether or not they’ve had an effect on my fine lines and wrinkles.

Pinterest image for Sewn By Tanya Project Review: DIY Silk Pillowcases by Julia Bleck (FabricWholeSale.com)
Sewn By Tanya Project Review: DIY Silk Pillowcases by Julia Bleck (FabricWholeSale.com)
Planning Ahead

The end of one year is a good time to starting planning for the next year. The cancellation of my summer trip has meant that many sewing projects I had planned for the second half of 2020 and early 2021 will be post-phoned indefinitely. I’ve had to really shuffle my schedule around to fill the gaps. I have several small business books that I’m reading and reviews of some of them will make it into my 2021 blog posts. I’m also planning to test out another sales channel (or two) to reach more customers.

Best wishes for a happy and healthy 2021!

Comment below and/or Pin me for later!

Tanya

Favourite projects and new skills

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