Disaster Week

This has been a frustrating craft week. I have diligently been trying to complete my sewing projects and nothing seems to be going right! 

It started with my pencil case design. I knew it was going to be difficult, sewing circles always makes me a little crazy... I should have stopped about an hour in. I should have taken a break. I should have relaxed and gone back to it with a fresh mind. I SHOULD all over myself. I ended up spending hours on this little pencil tube. It looks like a half-ass job. I called my mom the next day and she talked me down off the ledge and explained to me the proper way to go about this. I'm just not ready to go back there yet, but when I do, there will be pictures and a write up of Mom's way of doing things. (She's so smart).
  

In attempt to shake off that failed project, I moved on to the next catastrophe. I am working on my dress for the Fall for Cotton Sew Along. It's such a simple pattern, it'd be impossible for me to screw it up! Or so I thought... While I thought I had been careful and precise with my pattern alterations, I had not read all of the measurements correctly. As I tried on the dress for the first time, I quickly realized I had a big issue... my belly! I didn't alter the pattern enough for my boxy torso. So I have two options... Work out more and go on a diet, or alter the dress. I prefer the later :). It may take a while to lose 4" off my waist!. My plan is to make a little rectangle panel for the front waist. I figure I can do 2 buttons on each side and make it look like it was supposed to be there all along. Fingers crossed! I REALLY want to wear this dress. I have high hopes for this to be my new favorite.

Final disaster... and the biggest disappointment of them all... my Pixel Pinstripe dress. I learned my lesson a while back to always wash my fabric before cutting. Welp, I did that with my custom printed cotton from Spoonflower. The colors did not hold up as well as I would have hoped. It faded quite a bit, the fabric now has a greyish blue hue, not my original intention of a dark navy. Another lesson learned! Also, I didn't realize how much fabric I'd be losing to the increased salvages of custom printed fabric. That's probably my bad. I definitely didn't think about it when I ordered it. I was already trying to squeeze as much out of as little fabric as I could. Again, my bad. I was able to get all the pieces cut in my fabric, but there wasn't nearly enough to match the stripes. So I currently have this weird thing happening where random pieces are matching up completely on their own and others are way off, making the dress look asymmetrical. This may end up being something only I notice, but it's driving me batty right now! My backup plan here is to do a white top stitch over all the seams to break it up a little more and add a little extra flare. If nothing else, it may make me feel better about it all.

The goal here is to always end on an upbeat! So here's to hoping today ends my losing streak. Tonight is my last chunk of free time for the week so I plan on taking full advantage of it. I want to wear my new clothes!!!! UGH! These piles of unfinished goodies are taunting me. 

Lessons learned:

1. When in doubt, call mom.
2. Always make a muslin, no matter how simple the pattern looks.
3. Measure twice cut once... DUH!
4. Be prepared for fading on custom fabric (Avoid printing black!)
5. Always always always always order extra fabric. It's worth the extra $!