a learning experience for both you and I. I was surprised the amount of positive feedback I received on Monday’s post about tips for sewing bloggers. Just like my tutorials on how to draft a sloper, I almost didn’t publish it. Every blogger writes a tips for blogging post and I didn’t want come across as cliché. But I thought that my tips were different and from comments I read, so did you.
On Wednesday night, I finished sewing a bra that I was sure would fit. I spent a month fine tuning and cross checking the pattern, thinking through each alteration. It didn’t fit and I was bummed. I tried it on, took it off, tried it on, and took it off. I tried it on one more time. The underarm was pulling in all sorts of directions, kind of like Joan Rivers face except not as tight (okay, Maddie, that was rude…). I took off the bra one last time.
“How is it that Amy hosted an entire sew-a-long and I still don’t have one bra that is worthy enough for brag about?”
“Wait a second. Wait. A. Second. Wasn’t it you who just posted to stitch at your own pace? Yep. That was you. Hypocrite.”
After my harsh internal dialogue, I stepped away from the project as every seamstress should do when they find themselves in a bind (I give myself at least one night to think before cutting, pinning, or any other form of correcting). I started to remember the summer I drafted my sloper. Alla, the technical designer I worked under, and I fit and altered the pattern four times over the course of four months before we finished. And there were two of us! But we eventually achieved a perfect pattern and I will do the same with my bra pattern. “Stitch at your own pace” – that lesson I gave to you earlier in the week came back to teach me – the teacher. So what if Amy completed an entire sew-a-long? This isn’t school and this isn’t work, there is no deadline. Mrs. Borowski can’t give me a detention for turning in an assignment late (Mrs. Borowski… you know… my sophomore high school English teacher). So why feel pressured or bummed? Not me, not I, no I won’t feel pressured is the attitude I woke up with the next morning. I will move on, pushing myself to make a beautifully fitted and construction bra. I’ll get there, I know it, but until then, I’m going to keep moving… forward. It doesn’t matter when I finish my goal, what matters is that I have a goal that I’m working towards.