Nips, (Pin) Tucks, and Disaster

Funny that this particular sewing title should contain the word “nip”.  While not the intended use of the word originally, at the moment I am thinking about this sort of “nip”.

And if it wasn’t eleven o’clock in the morning I would seriously consider it.  Here’s what happened…

I have been away from sewing for a bit, mostly because I was paralyzed by an overabundance of possible projects.  Plus this blog has diverted some of my creative energies from sewing to writing.  I had been wanting to get back into the sewing room, and since I was feeling a little rusty I decided to keep it simple and casual and make an everyday blouse.   I have made of bunch of these already so I chose something that required enough new technique to make things interesting.  Here’s what I picked:

At this point I would expect any reader with any taste to say “ugh”!  I’m not sure who the pattern manufacturer was targeting.  I’d venture to say certainly not a 50-something or anyone with style.  That being said, I consulted my trusty Patternreview.com website and found that  a number of sewists had made this in modern fabric and made it look good.  I figured that view D wasn’t too objectionable and it had pin tucks ( like on a tuxedo shirt) which I had never sewn before.  Plus I thought it would look good in this fabric which has been in my stash (official sewing/knitting term) since last year:

I’d been taking my time with this project-tracing the pattern, cutting it out and marking it over several days to minimize the tedium of the pre-sewing steps.  Yesterday I got to it in earnest and this morning I was determined to completely finish it and post it proudly on the blog.  I was even going to trot out the tripod and learn how to do a “selfie”.

So in order to not lose myself entirely in the downer of the morning I will point out the positives of this project.   First it is really cute:

I loved how the fabric worked with the pattern and I could picture wearing it with white or denim. Second, I learned how to sew pin tucks:

My buttonholes were pretty stellar too, and that’s not often the case.  Finally, I learned how to sew a french seam.  This is a method of enclosing a seam “into itself” so that edges don’t show through to the front of the garment in a sheer fabric.  It looks like this on the inside:

So I was tooling along opening up my buttonholes and thinking that I might even wear this shirt today when this happened:

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

I was horrified but it was over in a flash.  My super-sharp seam ripper that I use to open the buttonholes somehow managed to miss the pin that was inserted at the top of the hole to avoid just. this. sort. of. thing.  And this is one of those mistakes that impacts so many pieces of the project that there is no option to fix it.  Such a bummer.

At this moment I am supremely grateful that I can process this unfortunate experience on my blog.  The alternative would have been polishing off what’s left of our strawberry cake and moving onto something even more heinous.  I am also grateful for this:

After I publish this post I am going outside to commune with the gardening gods who have been much more gentle with me today than the sewing gods.

It’s good to have multiple hobbies.