It’s always fun to look at failed projects! Of course, beauty (or success) is in the eye of the beholder. According to my eye, these were fairly dismal results.

Behold, exhibit number One: the Ines Sweater by We Are All Knitters, using their cotton pima yarn.

Some serious sloppiness with this one, but I swear it’s the fault of the pattern design. It was a kit, and instead of including smaller needles with which to knit that ribbing at the neck and the hem, it directs you to just use the same size needles as for the body. As any experienced knitter knows, ribbing will always come out bigger than straight-up stockinette stitch, so I really should have ignored the directions and used smaller needles for the ribbing.

And gah, look at all that lumpy bulk where the sleeves were sewn shut. I ended up attacking that seam with my serger to try to remove some of the bulk, and it worked a bit, but not enough to save the sweater.

Here’s what it was SUPPOSED to look like:

Behold, exhibit number Two: the Palisade Shorts by Papercut Patterns. The wide elasticized waist was the bane of my existence during the few times that I wore these: it twisted up EVERY TIME I used the bathroom, and I would spend minutes struggling to get it flat again.

So I tried my hand at sewing down the waistband. Turns out my hand is seriously not very good at that. I suppose they are more wearable now that the elastic doesn’t twist up, but I’ll be damned if I’m ever going to let that waistband show in public. Anyone have good advice on how to topstitch along the length of an elastic waistband while keeping your stitching parallel and without bunching the waistband all up?

Behold, exhibit number Three: Butterick 6134. I love the fabric but it was wasted on this design (and my sloppy hems). I don’t know why, exactly, but I feel schlubby wearing this.

Behold, exhibit number Four: the Underwood Tank/Dress by Sew House Seven. I was hoping this would make a good beach cover up, but I think both my pattern placement as well as the very relaxed fit of the design and the wide shoulder straps do absolutely nothing for my figure. It’s also a sort of neither-here-nor-there length, with the hem at about mid-calf. I do have plans to rescue this one, though.

Behold exhibit number Five: the zero-waste Brumer Dress by Milan AV-JC. No fault of the pattern design; I just chose the WRONG fabric. I wanted to use this as a floaty beach cover up but for some reason I thought using cotton-elastane shirting with giant birds in barbie-doll pink was a good idea. It was really interesting to make the garment; it just wasn’t good for wearing. I blogged about it here. I plan to re-use the fabric for something else eventually.

I hope you got a giggle out of some of these ill-conceived garments I churned out in 2019. Here’s to 2020 being a great year for sewing!

Thanks for stopping by.

— Lori