Mistakes Were Made*

In my last few posts I’ve talked about how refashioning can support our commitment to change our clothes to fit our bodies, not the other way around. I’ve also explored how challenging it can be to let go of the control we desire when a project doesn’t go as we hoped, and how a sewing practice can help us learn to listen to our own voices and priorities when making decisions. If, despite my mixed results, you feel inspired to try to refashion something that’s too small for you, I am here to share some advice from the process I learned along the way.

I was thinking about control when I stepped back to my sewing machine to tackle my dinosaur dress. I’ve written about how sewing helped me shift how I feel about my body, the realization I could make clothes that fit my body instead of making my body fit my clothes. But, when I pulled a me-made out from my closet and found it too small for the first time, I realized the down side. Throwing away a shitty dress from target when I’ve gained weight feels crummy, but no longer fitting into something I spent hours making feels so much worse. Rather than helping me let go of control over my body, in this moment sewing was allowing me to reinforce my desire for control in another way.

One way sewing boosts my confidence is that I can de-emphasize how I look and focus instead on how badass I feel wearing clothes I made all by myself. Of course, to grow and learn and get better at sewing (and anything else) means we’re always reaching just a little further outside our comfort zone to nail the next challenge. And as we reach for greater and greater challenges, it turns out, just like we can’t entirely control our bodies, we also can’t entirely control the outcomes of our makes.

I thought remaking my dinosaur dress might be emotionally challenging, and expected to feel a little extra perfectionistic about something so sentimental, so I wanted a couple slam dunks to boost my confidence before I tackled it. So, I picked 2 things to start with I assumed would be smooth sailing. While one was the success I was hoping for, the other was a huge bummer.

“We are organic creatures, we grow without supervision.”

—She’s All Fat Podcast, Episode “Seams Fake, But Okay”

When I first started sewing, I started with refashioning. I’d go to a thrift store, find items with potential—an oversized men’s shirt that would make a cool dress, or a dress that would be cuter as a top—and alter and repurpose them. At the time it was a low barrier way in to sewing. I was clueless about fit, fabric, and patterns, so starting from something was much easier than starting from scratch. I liked it for sustainability reasons as well. As I got more into it, refashioning unexpectedly began to shift how I thought about my body as well. Looking in the fitting room mirror and looking for the potential to rework a product of some other designer’s decisions felt very different from looking in a fitting room mirror and seeing a body that was a lost cause. I’ve become more competent at sewing in the last couple years, and my refashioning practice fell away as I began to make myself exactly what I wanted from scratch.

Then, a few months ago I found myself pulling items out of my closet that were suddenly too tight. My clothes delivered the news I’d gained weight, and my reaction was intense, negative, and totally incompatible with my values. By then I knew how to think and talk about the weaponization of beauty standards against women. I knew what fat-phobia was and that I wanted to resist it. I knew that we all deserve better than to waste our lives obsessing over food and wishing ourselves smaller. I knew all this, but that didn’t stop my panicked calculation of how long I might need to diet to get myself back into those clothes.

And even beneath all that I knew an even sadder truth: I didn’t even like my body when those now-too-tight clothes fit me. Even if I ignored my feminist critique, managed to resist my unruly appetite, and somehow beat the odds that say >95% of dieters gain back all the weight they’ve lost and more within 5 years, and I could somehow get myself back to the size I was when those clothes fit, I wouldn’t be satisfied then either.

I needed to find a new way to respond when I encountered my changed body. If I couldn’t control my body, I figured I could at least use my sewing skills to exert more control over how I dress it, and I definitely didn’t want to have too-small clothes hanging around in my closet making me feel bad.

While this blog has been on a bit of a break, I’ve been exploring more about how sewing is shifting how I relate to my body, and what being a perfectionist as a crafter has to do with being a perfectionist when it comes to my own body. I wrote this piece for another project, and now I’m sharing it here:

Shopping for clothes has always been an emotionally loaded experience for me. I’ve cried in a lot of retail fitting rooms, and I know I’m not the only one. So many of the moments and milestones that should have been joyful for me were spent obsessing over what to wear and then feeling uncomfortable in my skin and in my clothes, like that time I cried getting ready for my high school graduation because I hated how I looked in my dress, instead of because I was going to miss my friends. Messages from my family and from the culture about how I am supposed to look and dress drowned out my own voice and style. How to dress “flattering” was the only rulebook I had, and it didn’t leave any room at all for self-expression or for fun.

For most of my adult life I didn’t wear sleeveless tops or shorts. As of last summer, while I’d slowly pushed myself year after year to get comfortable showing my body more, I still almost never had the guts to leave my home in shorts and a tank top, I always needed a little extra coverage as a security blanket. As a camp counselor last summer I looked around and noticed I was among the fattest counselors. I decided something: I was not going to let the young girls around me see their fat counselor hide her body and sweat in the heat. I decided that whatever insecurity and discomfort I was feeling, my position as a role model was more important to me than looking cute in shorts. So, I wore shorts and tanks all summer long. I didn’t have to believe I looked cute, but I did have to sell it to the kids around me. When I felt the urge to cover up I realized I was fighting a new battle. Rather than arguing with myself about whether I looked good, I had a much better standard to guide my clothing choices.

And being a role model wasn’t the only “better standard.” Turns out there were lots of them. I could be more comfortable, have more fun, or spend more time doing other things. I began to imagine that rather than waiting to feel attractive enough, thin enough, or confident enough, I could give myself new reasons to push back against my mean internal monologue when I get dressed in the morning.

Armed with the motivation to push back against the rules and standards that have governed the first three decades of my life, the skills to make myself a new wardrobe, and the insight that there are standards other than those given to me by family and culture by which I can assess an outfit, a few months ago I decided to make a list of the fashion rules I felt holding me back and make myself outfits to push back against those rules. I chose to make the outfits because for me making clothes is a way to withhold my money from an industry that wants me to feel bad about my body so I’ll buy more, take control over style and fit, and to stop spending time and money navigating the absurdity of women’s clothing sizes.

So I made these clothes and wrote these articles to represent the standard “how to dress flattering” advice our culture has to offer women, alongside the story of my own journey to remake those standards and my relationship to them. Whether you choose to make or buy clothes, there are ways to remake your standards.

I consider myself a competent baker, but there are 2 things I consistently make poorly: brownies and pancakes. Allegedly two of the simplest and easiest things there are. Recently, when I lamented this to a friend, she suggested that perhaps it was because when I think something should be easy I am less careful than when I think it is going to be hard. Eureka! An explanation.

Fast forward to me making a dead simple dress that I’ve made at least twice before, and completely screwing it up. First, I was lazy at the moment of cutting the pattern, and didn’t check that I was using the right marks for where to cut the bodice (the dress is adapted from a shirt pattern, and to make it I cut the bodice horizontally about halfway down). Next, I forgot to fit the dress between basting together the pieces and topstitching them (a moment when it still would have been relatively easy to backtrack). I didn’t notice the waistline was a full 2 inches from where it was supposed to be until I was almost done. To make matters worse, I was cutting too quickly with my rotary cutter and a clipped a little hole right smack in the middle of the skirt (File under: There’s another %$#@& hole in my dress?!). This one I can live with–it’s barely visible, and I did a cute visible mend of the word “oops” on there.

Last fall I was a bit more adventurous in my sewing, foraying into knits, lingerie and other tricky domains, and over the holidays seemed like a nice time to take on something a bit more familiar. I returned to the tried and true Grainline Archer and Alder.

I laid out the pattern, and carefully checked, double cheked and triple checked that I had all the right pieces to combine the patterns successfully (I did NOT want a repeat of this debacle, which all began with a very confusing Archer + Alder mashup). Naturally, mistakes were made. This time, I bought JUST the right amount of fabric. As in, with all the pieces laid out it was clear I would not have enough material to re cut any pieces if I messed up. I know myself, so I knew to expect some trouble along the way. Now I also knew that I couldn’t afford to be careless, or I’d run out of material. No pressure. Oh, and also, the right and wrong sides of thwe fabric were nearly impossible to tell apart, so I knew I’d be scrutinizing every single step to make sure I had the right set up.

Turns out, when I’m extremely careful, I risk going around the bend back to careless. With my attention absolutely laser focused on checking the right vs. wrong sides of the fabric over and over, I was not going to let a detail get by me. That, my friends, is how without letting any tiny details get by, I nearly made a dress with 2 left sides 🤣.

When I started knitting, I chose it as a mindful, stress relieving activity. Little did I know I’d find myself choosing every more fiddly and tedious projects, too stubborn to put down an annoying project and move on to a more relaxing one. That stubborness is how I found myself working on this same pair of gray ribbed lace socks for more than a year. Of course, I didn’t actually work on them for a year, or they’d have been done much faster. I mostly just avoided then for a year.

The turning point, surprisingly, came when I made my first exptremely visible mistake on them. If you look closely (extremely visible is in the eye of the beholder) you can see that one of those socks has several wonky spots in the lace pattern where it shifts to the side, then back again. I got off track, I didn’t notice. By the time I realized it I was out of my depth in trying to take the stitches out, and there it was: a big ugly mistake.

Surprisingly though, suddenly knitting these socks wasn’t so annoying. Given my commitment to accepting my imperfect crafts, there was no way I was going to quit on them then. I didn’t really care anymore if they were perfect, because I already knew they weren’t. I was no longer preoccupied with counting every stitch so carefully. With that freedom, I kept on knitting until I had 2 socks, and I wore them on my feet, and I could see that nobody could possibly notice the mistake from all the way up at standing height anyway, and it absolutely doesn’t matter.

The final surprise came for me when my second sock was, in fact, perfect. Apparently, freed from the tyranny of perfecionism, I went ahead and calmly knitted the perfect sock.

So far on this blog I’ve been writing about encountering mistakes I make in craft. Today, I’m turning my attention to how crafting can be a remedy for an emotional mistake, instead of the other way around.

A few years ago, I made my mom a scarf out of a beautiful piece of Liberty of London pomegranate printed fabric. There were many, many reasons it was a thoughtful gift, and one I thought she would find special. In my memory, when I gave her the scarf, her reaction was… tepid. She said a lukewarm thank you, and she commented on how I didn’t do the right kind of hem. Fancy scarf hems are supposed to be hand slip-stitched, she pointed out, not machine hemmed. Later, my mom insisted that she’d reacted warmly to the gift, but the whole thing still left me disappointed.

For the last few years, a small remnant of that fabric has been sitting in my scrap pile, practically radioactive in its symbolism of yearning and futility. I haven’t been able to use it, and I haven’t been able to throw it away. As the years have gone by my relationship with my mom has broken down further and further, to the point where I allow her practically no access to me. Still, this little scrap of fabric is just sitting there, daring me to find a way to make something with it.

This is the cubby in my closet where fabric scraps live. But a few weeks ago, this cubby also became home to an unfinished attempt at a McCall’s pattern

I started working on it in a terrible mood, hoping a project would lift my spirits. Instead everything that could go wrong did go wrong. It was too small and tight to zip properly, but unzipped the zipper looked stupid. I didn’t do the facings correctly. The two lines of stitching weren’t even close to parallel. It was itchy. As my frustration built, I accidentally snipped a 2 inch hole in the shoulder. When I cut that hole I was so annoyed I couldn’t imagine trying to finish it. I crumpled it and stashed it with my scraps. I was too mad at it, turns out, to even snap a photo. I went back to bed.

“Wabi Sabi is, in one respect, the condition of coming to terms with what you consider ugly.” -Leonard Koren

Last weekend I decided to make a dress. I’ve made the sleeveless version of this dress three times, and the long sleeved shirt once. There was even a tutorial on the blog on two different methods to combine them. I planned on making a perfect black denim dress I could wear proudly all year round.

A different thing happened instead.

So, first of all, it turns out chambray is not denim. Denim is hearty and rugged and resilient to mistakes. Chambray is thin and fragile,just waiting to run and pull. Tears in it leave a stipple of white threads dotting its beautiful dark surface.

Of course, how chambray looks when it pulls and runs is only relevant if you cause pulls and runs. Which, of course, I did. This hole began with the observation that the side was dimpled where some gathers from the skirt were caught in the side seam. No big deal, I thought, I’ll just open the seam and re-sew it. As soon as I began to open the seam, I ripped 2 holes into the side of the dress, leaving tufts of white threads surrounding 2 rather large open tears.

I’d like to pause here, on my reaction to this mistake, the first of the many that turned my aspirational perfect black dress into an emotional encounter with my own imperfections and limitations. When I tore the hole I thought, “what an idiot. Here I was rushing to open the seam and I made a tear. So careless. If only I were more careful!” Of course, I couldn’t only be upset about my carelessness, I also had to pause for a brief referendum on whether I am even a competent maker at all. And, once I began to evaluate my competence, there was the question of hubris–what made me think I was ready to use this material? I was so uninformed I didn’t even realize what I ordered wasn’t denim. This is the amateur mistake of a person who doesn’t even know the difference between denim and chambray!

So, now, in the cold light of day, I’d like to look more closely at that reaction. Much to my chagrin, I’m going to have to quote Oprah saying, “Every failure is a teacher.” If this white tufted tear is here to teach me, surely it is here to help me come to terms with the inevitability of mistakes, and maybe one day it will even share a lesson on celebrating them.

It is imperative that the header of this blog be in comic sans. Why, you ask? Because comic sans has character, and isn’t afraid to show it. One can always just use a default like Arial or Times New Roman, so every single time you see Comic Sans, someone cared enough to make that choice. Comic Sans says, “I may be a little corny, but I bring 100% effort every time.” This blog is a tribute to the unruly and imperfect – to the adventure and epiphany that emerges from what is amateur and messy. So, in a way, is Comic Sans.

Comic sans is maligned among designers, not for its own faults, but for what it represents. Mocking Comic Sans is a way of signaling “I’m a professional, and I’m in on the joke.” Many modern blog platforms don’t even offer Comic Sans, presumably to protect their users from the humiliation of innocently choosing a typeface that says to world, “I’m an amateur.” But, joke’s on us designers, because Comic Sans is an excellent typeface, both readable and friendly. It is even one of only a few widely available typefaces that uses infant characters, making it among the most accessible type faces for young people and people with reading disabilities.

So, once I realized the header of this blog could be in comic sans, I knew it must be. And once I knew it must be, I realized that it must link to the the greatest piece of internet writing in history, McSweeney’s “I’m Comic Sans, Asshole.” Now that I’ve decided to use Comic Sans, and I’ve discovered many modern blog platforms think they’re too good for Comic Sans, I’ve chosen to build my own website.

Here, on the pages of this tribute to the unruly and imperfect, Comic Sans holds the position of honor. Go ahead and call me an amateur. I’ll be busy getting hammered with Papyrus.