Sewing ... with Abandon

In Writer's Workshop, they call it abandoning a piece... it means realizing that this particular piece of writing is not for you, putting it aside (or even tossing it), and moving on. Saying "abandoning a piece" has always made me feel bad, like I was leaving a little piece of writing, sad and alone, in the woods or something.

However, as a teacher, you come to realize you have to encourage students to abandon their pieces sometimes. Even though you may really want to write about a topic, sometimes you get so bogged down in the process or details or conventions or whatever that you just can't continue, and it not only stymies your writing, it kind of takes the joy out of worktime because you're stuck.

Well, this happened to me last week in sewing. I started making Katie Anne a pair of overalls last November, before mono truly set in. I was practicing on her to make a pair of these because I was making some as Christmas gifts for some little boys, and I didn't want to make something as a gift that I'd never actually sewn before. So, I made her a little pair of brown and pink overalls with an inset panel on the chest. I didn't hem them or put buttons on... I just wanted to test the overall idea, and then I paused to start the boys' ones. I also planned to make her a matching shirt out of the pink plaid fabric later.

After I bought all the new summer fabric last weekend, I thought I'd better finish up this last winter outfit before I started the new stuff. So, I quickly finished the overalls... just buttons, buttonholes, and hemming the pants legs, and they were done:

Close up of panel...Well, I then began the shirt, using a pattern. Now, I've used patterns twice in all my sewing adventures... for sizing on the A-line dresses, and for sizing on the overalls. However, I never even opened the directions for them. I just used the cutting pieces and figured out the construction on my own. For this shirt, I wanted to really follow the directions line by line and try to do it by the book.

Here's how far I got...
This little beast is what confused me... who can understand this?

Obviously, many people can understand those goofy words and make a great shirt out of them, but not me. The shirt wound up looking like a half-made Elvis Vegas-style jumpsuit shirt... and I mean Elvis, The Later Years. I was just sick of working on it, but I didn't want to give up. However, I didn't really want to work on it... so I avoided sewing and would work on it for about 15 minutes a night, really just treading water. Then, I tried so hard to iron the Elvis collar flat that I kind of burnt it, and it looked sort of browny-pink.

Saunders encouraged me over and over to let it go - she could easily wear a pink or white shirt under the overalls and be fine. At about 11:00 pm Thursday night, after a frustrating night of trying to follow that goofy pattern, I agreed with him, and little pink plaid Elvis starred in a one-night-only performance in the trash can.

I kept the pattern, of course... I may try again later when I've gained more sewing expertise. But, for now, the best thing for this sewing ingenue was just to abandon that piece and move on to fun, summer sewing.



(Mom, did you notice ingenue!?)