Lessons Learned

No sewing yesterday.

There was, however, lots of thinking about sewing, mostly thinking about
sewing successes and failure and about the writing and posting about sewing
successes and failures. Have I mentioned
that I think FAR too much?

I finally took a pile of old clothes to the donation center
yesterday, and in the process I got rid of the green coat. It has been much on my mind. Why, you might ask? Why fret and dither about a coat that doesn’t
fit and is more of a sewing failure than a success? Why even post a picture and discussion of a
coat that is not up to par, and in fact was not quite up to par at the time it
was made? Why two posts about the same misbegotten project? Well precisely because it was
misbegotten. Hopefully I have learned
from my mistakes, but I also need reminders here and there, and my posts are as
much about as what I need to remember as they are about what anyone might want
to read.

I might prefer to remember only the success stories in my
sewing journey. And a reader might
prefer to read about fabulous stylish garments that they can dream of making
(not likely here though.) But sewing is
also about mistakes and lessons learned, or not learned, and sometimes the
failures are as important as or more important than the successes.

Hence the green coat. Again.

The biggest problem with the green coat is a construction
problem. It is glaring and I am sure
that all you astute readers noticed it right off and are too polite to point
it out to me.  This is not the shoulder problem, which really varies depending on what
I wear under the coat. It is not the
little wrinkle in the hang of the left sleeve, which is actually caused by the
excess padding I stuffed into the left shoulder so that the coat did not
collapse like a deflated balloon (and this accented the problem with the right
shoulder as well).

The problem with the green coat is the front closure:

I have blown it up here to remind you. You can scroll down two posts for the full
coat.

The front band pulls where I have attached the hooks. The coat obviously needs more structure here to support the weight of the hooks and the bulk of the bands I used to attach them. I obviously needed a different or more interfacing in the front of the coat. I
did not fuse the front coat pieces to a fusible interfacing like Textured Weft
and this would have helped considerably. This was obviously a lack of planning. I could have reinforced the area later by taking it apart and adding
interfacing to add strength to that area.  I could have remade the tabs or the bands. I didn’t because I already saw
other problems with the coat, and had decided it wasn’t worth the effort.

And yet I still wore the coat and even loved it despite my discomfort with it. Why? One reason is I loved the color of the fabric. The color makes me happy. Also it was warm and light. Thirdly it passed the DH test, who loves it, despite its errors which he noticed, but said “bah” As he pointed out, most of the droopy, saggy, cheaply made wool coats I see in my town all winter bag and sag and look
pathetic within an hour or two of being worn the first time and this coat did none of those things. An attractive scarf draped over the front hid any imperfections, which probably only I
noticed anyway.And lastly it is good to be reminded of our imperfections.

Even though I have finally given the coat away, there
are things I want to remember and learn from this coat, aside from the obvious
things like thinking out the construction and interfacing in advance, planning
design details (like overlapping the front bands so that air didn’t come in the
front of the coat, and accommodating figure variations.

Lessons from Green Coat:

1.    Don’t be afraid to use good fabric. This coat was good alpaca/wool coating. I don’t regret using it even if things didn’t turn out the way I wanted. Using good fabric saved the coat and made it wearable. Also, using fabric you have is better than buying more, especially buying
something you don’t really like because you are afraid to make a
mistake. Fabric that is not used is
wasted. Fabric that is used is not,
even if the garment fails. There is
always something to be learned and I don’t mind learning even at the cost
of good fabric. Strike it up to the
cost of education. Failure is being
afraid to try. If the coat had turned out perfectly but I had hated the
fabric it would have been even more of a disappointment and would have
still been a failure.

2.    Don’t
take complicated detailed projects to sewing camp. This should perhaps be lesson #1 for
me. It is not that a beautiful
tailored garment can’t be made at sewing camp. I know plenty of women who have done
it. But not I. When I am working on a project like
this, I need to lay out my materials and dance around the project. I need to play with different
interfacings, I need to hog the press and the ironing board, pressing and
leaving things to cool and dry. I
need time and space and a clear head. There are people who jump right into a sewing project and made
decisions on the fly, turning out very successful garments as they do
so. I am not one of those
people. I think too much. At sewing camp I share cutting tables
with 9 other women. We share
ironing boards. I don’t bring my
full interfacing collection, and mostly there are 9 or 10 other brains
thinking and contributing and adding distractions. Those distractions are PRECISELY what I
love about sewing camp. I come back
inspired and I look at things in new ways. But when I have made tailored jackets, or this coat, the garment is
nice, but it is not what I would have done at home in my own sewing room,
and so there is always a little bit of disappointment there. When I have made simpler, less
structured things, I have been much happier with my results. I need to learn from this coat and plan
accordingly. There are lots of
things I can sew at camp and I always come back from camp revitalized and
ready to try new things. Sewing camp makes me more free-spirited. I need to plan my projects accordingly.

3.    I need
to think more about the style of what I sew and what I really wear. The biggest disappointment with the
green coat is that it is too classic. I find it boring. I thought
I really wanted a classic coat; I thought that too many of my coats made
statements, I though I needed a quiet, classic, timeless coat. I was wrong. The coat is most definitely not me and
it would not be me even if I fixed the errors and altered it to fit; I
suppose that is why I never bothered. The coat goes with everything and yet it doesn’t fit in. It reminds me of a time when I was
dating my husband and he took me to meet a bunch of his old friends. He said I was always “too dressed up”
and that everyone always wore Frye boots and LL Bean. So I tried to dress accordingly. I wore Frye boots (I actually did own a
pair) and a very preppy button down shirt, Shetland sweater and
cords. I looked like everyone
else. And even though I was still
painfully shy in those days and I would think that I would have been
happier looking like everyone else and “fitting in”, I was miserable. I didn’t feel like myself. As a result I couldn’t act like myself and was even more reserved than usual.

I am 48 years old and I am still learning how to wear what I want, not what I think other people want me to be. I need to think about this when I sew something. I need to ask myself is this really what I want? Is it really what I need? Or is it what I think I am supposed to want and need?