On learning from our mistakes

I've been sewing for thirty odd years and I'm sure you'll believe me when I say I've made plenty of mistakes. We're supposed to learn from our mistakes, right? But there are a couple of mistakes that I just never seem to learn from, no matter how often I make them.

Like, my sewing machine is not telepathic. I mean, every time I need to switch from straight stitch to zig-zag, it surprises me that my machine doesn't realise this, and I actually have to stop and change the the stitch settings. Happens every time!

Another thing I have yet to to learn, it seems, is that it is a whole lot easier to unpick one row if stitching than a seam that has been stitched, overcast and top stitched. So it is better to check that everything is going as it should before doing all that stitching. Since I haven't yet learnt this, I spent half the day unpicking nearly all the sewing that I did on my last day off.

I've been working on a tiered skirt for Miss Missy. I'm making it up as I go along. Last week, I actually had it almost finished, I just had to do the hem and the waist band. But the more I looked at it, the more I thought that I'd gotten the proportions wrong. Not only had I skimped on the fabric for the second tier, so it was barely gathered, but I'd made it too long too. I spent half the week telling myself that it didn't look that bad, and the other half of the week trying to figure out away to fix it without unpicking everything.  

In the end, I bought a little bit more fabric (actually, that's another lesson, I don't seem to have learnt yet) unpicked the whole thing, and I'm much happier with the way it looks now.

It's going to be one of Miss Missy's presents, so I'll share a photo of it after Christmas, when I can get her to model it.