Today we are going to talk about this year misses. It’s not something to cry about if from our mistakes we can learn something for the future. That’s why I’ll not only talk about the misses but also what I should have done to avoid them in the future.
1. Mad Men Dress Challenge: Product of my inexperience but it helped me to lose the fear of making a garment from scratch by myself. You can see the poor fit, before knowing how to do a sway back adjustment. You also don’t want to see how I finished my seams, they look hideous and some of them are not even finished. The collar doesn’t fall right. This was a partial failure but it was also a great start, and the most important think, I know how to avoid the same mistakes. I would need a sway back adjustment, to cut the lower piece of the collar a bit smaller and to finish my seams neatly. But you know, this was pre-A-line skirt.
2. Hawthorne: I don’t know why but I was not thrilled about this from the beginning but the sewalong motivated me to make this dress. Unfortnately in my inexperience I didn’t do an FBA and the bodice doesn’t fit well. So naive, I thought moving the darts was enough, but you can see that the waist drops a bit at the front. Now I know what to do for the next time. I could also have adjusted the waist to have it a little bit more tight there.
3. Portrait Blouse: I liked how the blouse looked on Gertie, but I think we have a different complexion. I had to prolong the tucks to avoid having a sack appearance. The fit is right now but the armholes are just wrong. I’m not sure if it’s a design issue. On one hand they are a bit too tight on the underarm and on the other hand that part did not form a 90º angle so when you join the front and the back and need to hem that, it doesn’t sit right. I need to fix it, I think I’ll leave it for spring.
4. Crochet booties: I haven’t talked about them here because I didn’t considerate it worth it. They were just two pairs that cost me two evenings so I’m not going to cry about it. The main problem here was that the Koen’s nephew will be as tall as his uncle, and it’s already showing now 😉
Probably you’ll notice that I only talked about four projects and none of them was a knit, since I am very satisfied with all of them (you know, experience). I think it was a good year in general, and making some mistakes from time to time can be very didactic. The important thing is to recognize them and learn from them. And you’ll see that you will commit less of them when you gain more experience. Not that you will not make mistakes, but they will be smaller and fewer. I’m quite satisfied with my knitting nowadays, since I have gained enough experience so that I don’t make loads of stupid mistakes and when I make them I know how to recognize them early in the process so that it’s not painful in the end.
Learning and having fun. This is the goal of this, am I right?