Stop Blogging Your Perfect Sewing Life

Recently, an article entitled "Stop Instagramming Your Perfect Life" has been making its rounds among my IRL friends (contrast this to you, my dear readers, who are the friends I never know how to describe -- "this lady I kind of feel like I know from the Internet because we read and comment on each others' sewing blogs, but I've never met her, and I only know her by her blog handle and I'm pretty sure that's not her real name"). The author discusses how social media (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) can not only make people dissatisfied with their "normal" life, but it can also keep people from connecting authentically because everything looks fine in their pictures, status updates, and tweets. Since I'm an introvert, I don't do well with having to connect with multiple people all the time, so I actually find these snippets from people's lives helpful. Also, maybe it's just my perfectionist tendencies and Asian "saving face" upbringing, but I find it difficult to let others in on my messes. Still, I do understand the sentiment behind the article. When all you're reading is posts about perfectly fitted pants and sleeves that didn't have any issues with being set in, it can get a little discouraging. (Incidentally, I'm not accusing anyone else of doing this -- most of the other bloggers I read are lovely in their real-ness, but my personal tendency is to just blog tra la la it's fun with sheets, all the time!)

So, in the interest of being honest, allow me to share some not-so-perfect bits of my life from this very week, as they specifically relate to my sewing. 

1) Making a wedding dress for someone isn't all exhilaration about gorgeous satin. When I first put together the skirt for Elaine's wedding dress, I was pretty psyched about what I thought was a brilliant idea at the time: I would do flat-felled side seams, then thread a piece of ribbon through the inside of the seam to use for gathering up the skirt. That way, I wouldn't have to make a separate channel on top of the seam (and therefore stitch four whole extra lines). Killing two birds with one stone, so brilliant, right? Unfortunately, I neglected to think through the hemming...In order to hem the skirt, and still keep the ribbon free, I ended up ripping a tiny bit of the channel above the proposed hemline, carefully pulling the ribbon out of the hole, and then having to make a hand-worked eyelet around the rip to keep the edges from fraying. In the end, it didn't take too much extra time, but a bit of forethought might have been nice.

Pictures of this were too blurry, since 1) dark purple, 2) reflective satin, 3) the best thread-matching I've ever done, and 4) really tiny details. Instead, I settled for drawing a picture, with cats to illustrate my sentiments. 

2) I left my phone at a Joann's Fabrics in San Leandro yesterday. I stopped there to get some more thread (thinking foolishly that it would be more convenient to pick it up there after work instead of the very-difficult-to-get-to Santa Monica location that's close to home), pulled out my phone to check something and set it down, neglected to pick it back up, and then left the store. I didn't realize that I'd lost it until after the store closed. To my relief, a quick call revealed that they had found the phone and would hold it for me, but the problem was that I was restricted to public transportation today. Of course, the store isn't located near any convenient stops; long story short, I would've either had to walk three miles or take buses for an hour and half to get it back. I'm just so grateful that my principal was able to stop by and pick it up for me! But so much for thinking I could be really efficient with my sewing errands...

3) I've got someone coming over to stay tomorrow night, and this is what the sewing/guest room looks like right now. This is about as real as it gets, yo. Sometimes, in a fit of manic creativity, you just move onto the next project without neatening up, right? Please tell me you do that too!

As you walk into the room, this is what you see. Yeah, that's a pile of  scraps on the floor. And a piece of black fabric draped over the bookcase. And overflowing boxes and bags everywhere. And several shoeboxes of notions that just never manage to stay stacked. 

In case you couldn't tell that that was an ironing board on the left in the first picture. I wouldn't blame you, though, as it's covered with hats that I don't know how to store (I need some hatboxes!) and fabric. And bags of unfinished projects underneath, and a teetering stack of vibrantly-colored fabrics for this month's stashbusting challenge. It's a wonder I can ever manage to press my seams. 

At least the actual sewing area isn't as bad in comparison? At least my thread is organized by color? At least it's too dim under the chair for you all to see how many snipped threads are hanging out down there? 

Mr. Cation is pretty gracious about ignoring the mess in there most of the time (although he occasionally, jokingly (but also kind of seriously), complains that he isn't allowed into a whole room in his own apartment), but that just means that when I do need to make it livable, things are that much worse.

So there you go -- if all of that isn't wonderfully imperfect, I don't know what is!

On the other hand, Walnut is always fabulous. Oh, except for that one time (not this week, thank goodness) that he got diarrhea and some of it stuck to his butt, and then he sat down on some of my fabric. Yuck. I'm just glad that it was only a yard of cheap poly-knit that I had no concrete plans for, so no real harm done. But it just goes to show, even sewing with cats can't always be fun and games!

What kind of sewing-related disasters don't make it onto your blog?