Monday, March 05, 2007

Finishing Frustration

Yesterday, the dude and I put up a map in the guest room/study. You can see it here. It was a marvel, it took only 3 hours and we didn't fight or argue once.

But it left me precious little time to finish the poodle freebie as a pillow for my niece. Because the piece was so large, I decided not to applique it to a 15x15 square (to cover a 14x14 pillow) like I did for the January pillow (which I have, regretfully, not yet photographed). I can add, so I was going to put strips around the edge. But apparently I am a sewing dufus. I knew the project was 8x8 so I was going to add two 3.5 strips to bring it to 15 inches across. Which sounds fine except that I used a half inch seam rather than attaching the strips by magic, which would yeild a 0" seam (8+3.5+3.5=15 except when you reduce everything by the seam allowance, d'oh). So I raced around looking for the seam ripper, couldn't find it; and I had used some sort of teeny tiny stitch length, and I couldn't get the scissors in there to save my life. Of course, I had to tell my developmentally delayed neice that auntie was very sorry, but she screwed up and someday she could have a pillow made from this fabric and this adorable poodle stitch. And I got her the same t-shirt that she was wearing yesterday. I bought her a t-shirt with a dalmation on it at Target and got her a pink long-sleeved t-shirt to wear under it. She was wearing a pink turtleneck under hers.

Moral of the story? I am an excellent wallpaperer but a really lousy aunt.

Today I started a biscornu as a gift for a friend. It's due Thursday. Will I make it? Stay tuned!

3 comments:

mainely stitching said...

Yep, sounds very familiar. I made a Christmas gift for my dad like this one year. Or I should say, I failed to make a Christmas gift for him one year because I did the same thing. Sewing dufuses unite! (Or would we be dufi?)

Anonymous said...

I feel your pain. I regularly forget to include seam allowances in my calculations. So frustrating.

Laura W said...

Sewing dufus's knit or needlepoint.... else we would sew.