Make It With Wool!

Hey Everyone!

By now I'm sure all my faithful readers are familiar with the Make It With Wool Contest. For those of you who have not heard of Make it With Wool (MIWW here and throughout!), this contest encourages people of all ages to promote the beauty and versatility of wool fabrics and yarns, and also encourage creativity in sewing, knitting, crocheting, spinning, and weaving wool fabrics and yarns. For the past 2 years I have participated in this contest. The first year, 2007, I crocheted a purple trench coat that won my state contest, qualifying me to attend the National MIWW contest. While I didn't place at the national contest, I had an amazing experiance and gained a friend that will last a lifetime.

This past year I had another great MIWW experiance, although I learned a dissapointing pitfall to our state contest. While the contest is open for every kind of use of wool, as stated above, there seems to be an emphasis placed on the importance of sewing used in the contest. In my 2008 outfit, I spent well over 50 hours creating a beautiful, unique, one of a kind coat that I took from icky, greasy fleece to dying, to spinning, and crocheting. Then I decided that since I really wanted to go on and win the National contest, I'd sew a pair of pants to complete my ensamble. As you may have surmised, sewing my pants ended up being a major disaster that compromised the coat that could have won very well on it's own. Not winning our state contest last year made me more determind than ever to learn to sew WELL and be able to pull of a victory at the 2009 contest.

This year, I've taken on 2 new challenges in the contest -
1. I am no longer in the Junior Category. Now that I'm a "Senior" I have to battle it out against the other 17-24 year olds, most of whom have much more sewing experiance than me.
2. Rather than entering the typical 1 outfit like everyone else, I'm making 2 outfits! I'm very excited at this new challenge, and am putting every ounce of perfection I can into every piece that goes into each outfit.

Now, are you excited or what? Why don't you find out if you have a Make it With Wool contest in your state...Yes, they have an adult category! Check back here over the next few days to see what I've made so far for the contest!

Happy Crocheting!
Chelsea