Well, There's Your Problem...!

OK, I've been dreading this post, but I guess it has to happen eventually no matter how painful it may be for me... I promised myself when I started the blog it would be a warts-and-all learning experience, and that even if I screwed up I would share my mistakes as well as my successes, otherwise how would people learn? How would I learn unless I was honest enough to share the goofs along with the insights?

Well, my friends... I goofed, bigtime. On the awesome sleepsack I was putting together on the last few posts... Completely, f'd it up. What happened, you say?

It is painful to admit, but I made a kind of beginner's mistake. It was something I didn't even notice until I was ready to finish the back of the sack, and started placing the zipper... let me rewind a little bit.

You see, this sack is designed to both lace and zip up in the rear. And in order to keep the lacing panel somewhat centered, I offset the zipper to one side. This means the panels that form the rear of the sack are slightly smaller on the zipper side, and slightly larger on the lacing-only side. That size difference needs to be the same on all the rear-panel pieces: the hood, the shoulders, and the left and right body panels... Can you see where this is headed...? I ended up cutting the hood so the smaller panel is on the left-hand side, and the rear body panel with the smaller panel on the right. I didn't notice the mistake until I tried to sew in the zipper, only to discover (to my horror) what I had done...

It was as simple as flipping over the 2 pattern pieces for the rear hood panels. That would've fixed the whole thing. But the problem is, I didn't catch it until the parts were already sewn together.

Because the hood was already sewn to the shoulders, and the shoulders were sewn to the body, and all these seams were topstitched and trimmed, there was no good way to salvage the project, at least as it was intended to be. I may yet come up with a way to get something out of it somehow, but if not, I guess I can make some really nice wallets for everyone on my Christmas list this year.

I just have to chalk this up as another one of those painful learning experiences, and know that at least next time I won't make this particular mistake again. There, I feel better now. Thanks for listening.