4 Ways to Track your Sewing

Track your sewing and all of the progress you make at the sewing machine with these 4 clever ways to feel super productive!

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Its no secret I’m a bit of a stats geek – If I’m in safe company here (and I think I am), here are 4 ways you can track your own sewing progress throughout the year to get major good feels from all that productivity at your sewing machine!

SEWING JOURNAL

Previously featured on this blog is my own sewing journal, where I record personal makes for our family. I go into more detail here, but to sum it up, I sketch or use a trace of My Body Model, with a rough sketch of the garment, pattern names, sizes, and a swatch of fabric. So far the notebook is getting lovely and chunky and I hope to keep it forever!

It’s also deeply cathartic to finish a project and record it and hasn’t been a burden to me at all, because I’m not too worried what the pages look like.

Here’s a great example of a very practical sewing journal by Georgina @georgie.made.it. Included are more practical details like fabric content, alterations made to the pattern (and why), and notes about it eg “too heavy for summer” “Josh also likes this because…”

Another example which was my original inspiration, Sharaine’s @head.hearth.hands sewing journal. Whats great about this is the bullet journal style of short notes, cute headers, a little sketch, and swatch.

Tracking Quantities

Georgina @georgie.made.it shared her sewing break down with us, a very simple data driven form of recording sewing.

To do the same, you’ll need 4 coloumns, 1x each for type/pattern, who it’s for, month, running total of garments.

At the end of each month seal off your month of makes and tally up the totals. This is a great way to track quantities, and also who you are sewing for.

Extra for experts: Colour coding!

Track Metres (or yards) sewn

This idea is inspired my by good friend @Miriam. Keep your spools nearby and at the end of the year count up the metres sewn!

When you’re done, take them to your local preschool or kindergarten so they can repurpose them with play!

Time Tracking

Finally, you can track your time with this simple bullet journal layout. Break your project down into timed sittings, or sewing construction (eg, “sleeves” or “hemming”) and record either minutes or hours for each. Then, add them to horizonal bar. Your bar wont have any gaps in it like this one (they’re measuring time spent over the day), but you’ll be recording hours from 1 onwards

You could colour code your sittings or construction groupings, and watch them add up!