But this is probably the stupidest sewing one yet…
After I managed to salvage a Mabel out of the scraps of my Megan, I was left with a metre of this lovely fabric I picked up in the John Lewis sale. A Coco seemed like the perfect use for it. If I didn’t bother too much about pattern matching, then I figured I could just about manage it. I managed to cut it out in a spare hour I had in between finishing school and picking the kids up. Oh, and I was also trying to tidy up the kitchen and sort out the washing at the same time. Stupid idea! Not sure if you can tell from the above where I went wrong, but perhaps the following will help…
How stupid? Seriously, unfolding the pattern fully, before pinning and cutting, is so basic, it’s not even featured in the instructions. And Tilly’s are pretty comprehensive! But no, I happily cut it folded… I was so annoyed with myself!
After sufficient time had elapsed for me to calm down (a good week), I decided it was worth trying to rescue the situation. I had nowhere near enough fabric left to cut the whole piece again, but I thought I could try and just cut the missing bit out separately (including a seam allowance) and attach it. The only problem was that as I didn’t have an awful lot of fabric left, pattern matching would be out of the question. And while you can kind of get away with it on the side seams, right at the top of the front bodice was going to just be too obvious. After playing around for a bit, I decided that it would be better to just reverse the fabric instead and attempt to make a ‘feature’ of it. And rather than just have a random section of it in grey, I figured it would be better to reverse the sleeves too.
So, while I did manage to ‘rescue’ it, I’m not fully convinced that it worked! And for a whole host of reasons… It’s a fraction too small and doesn’t really work with jeans. I had to remove my belt for these photos to avoid a rather unsightly bulge around the middle. And really, this pattern was made for wearing at the weekend with jeans 😦 I’m also kind of wishing I’d cut more of the ‘missing piece’ as it maybe looks a little too narrow a section to work? Maybe it’s a touch too long in the body at the same time? Maybe it’s a case of a little of all the above.
So what’s the stupidest sewing mistake you’ve ever made? Tough as it is, could you even beat my stupidity on this project?