Sewing Project and Perfectionism

Yesterday, Eleanor completed a sewing project for which we had bought the materials several weeks ago. Margaret, she and I had bought some pillowcases and ribbon to make some cute dresses to send to Haiti. These were very simple dresses and perfect projects for the girls.

Well, we kind of put off doing them until the day before our deadline. Thanks to Flylady, I’m always suspicious now when I do something like that. So, when I stopped and thought about it for a moment, I realized that, yes, I had been putting off making these because there was a risk of their not being perfect.

I was not about to give up on this project just because there was a risk of the dresses not being perfect, so we got out the new-to-us sewing machine that I got at the auction last fall, complete with manual. Except, we realized, the manual was not for our machine. Okay…so we located the manual online, got the machine threaded and it really sewed quite beautifully. Eleanor got the casing made for the elastic across the front and back and then it was time to make the armhole casings for the shoulder ties. This was definitely more difficult to do than if we had made the casing before we gathered the front with elastic. After a quick phone consultation with Amelia, we dug through the bias tape box, found some perfect wide, double-fold, red bias tape, sewed the decorative ribbon we had originally intended as the ribbon ties onto one side of the bias tape and then sewed the newly decorated bias tape to the armscyes to make the shoulder ties. Whew. Then we repeated the whole process for the second dress.

Are the dresses perfect? No. Are they adorable and wearable? Yes. Would we wear them? Yes! So, off they go to Haiti tomorrow when Alissa adds them to her many, many contributions and mails it all.

Give it up, Perfectionism. We’ve got your number, now.

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Tags: Perfectionism, sewing