Show Notes

• The Alex apron


• 
  How to Overcome a Fabric Fail: Featuring Sarai’s flesh-colored Joss pants.


• 
  Letting Go of Mistakes: Episode 130


• Free Sewing Planner


• 
  Podcast listeners get half off an unlimited Seamwork membership when you use this link, plus you get to keep that price as long as you’re a member!


• Tell us your idea for the next icebreakers for makers!

Podcast Transcript

Sarai
You. I'm Sarai.

Haley
And I'm Haley.

Sarai
And this is Seamwork Radio. Welcome back to Seamwork Radio, where we share practical ideas for building a creative process so you can sew with intention and joy.

Today we're talking about whether we, as sewists, ever really feel satisfied with what we make, and we're going to cover why it's so hard to find satisfaction in the things you create, our own attitudes towards what makes a project a success, and a process you can use to shift your perspective and find more sewing wins.

All right, let's start with our icebreaker. Haley, what is the most satisfying thing that you've made recently?

Haley
Oh, this is tough. I mean, I feel like I've made a lot of really fun things lately. Just things that are fun to sew. I don't know if they're, like, in my mind, like, the fun and the satisfying, are maybe slightly different, but I think the last thing I made that I was really oddly satisfied by was I made an apron, our Alex apron. And it's just, like, out of quilting cotton, and I hacked it so that it was reversible, and it was just, like, one of those things that was so satisfying. Maybe it's because I was pressing so much.

Sarai
You like pressing?

Haley
I love pressing, so I was just at the iron, just, like, doing my thing. I was so satisfied by it, I made it before Thanksgiving. So instead of making, like, a fancy Thanksgiving outfit, I'm like, I'm going to make an apron. Because realistically, that’s what I'm going to be in all day. That might be a disappointing answer, but that's my answer.

Sarai
That's not disappointing at all. I admire your love for pressing. I got two steam burns yesterday from my iron, so I'm kind of anti-pressing at this moment. I think mine is, I made a dress yesterday, and it came out really lovely. So that's probably my most satisfying make at the moment. I've had a lot of good ones lately.

Haley
You have!

Sarai
I think it's because of Design Your Wardrobe, honestly, because I really planned everything out, and I was able to use fabrics that I really, really loved and really thought about what I was going to make, and it increases my satisfaction, like, 100 fold, I feel like.

Haley
Yeah.

Sarai
But the dress I made yesterday, I really like the fabric. It's really pretty. It's this vintage rayon with a rosebud print all over it, and it's so cute.

And the pattern was an old McCall's pattern, the Laura Ashley design. I'm doing a YouTube video on it, so we'll have that up in the next few weeks, I'm sure.

But it's so cute, and it's easy to wear, and it fits really nice, but it's not too tight either. I know I'm going to wear it a lot throughout the spring and summer, so I can tell that it's very wearable and it's very me. So that makes it really satisfying.

Haley
There's something so satisfying about just like a feel-good dress. I'm so excited that it's spring, even though as we speak, it's like gray and miserable outside here in Portland. But there's some beautiful dresses on the horizon.

Sarai
Yeah, I live in dresses in the summer. It's the best. Just throw something on like that.

Haley
No pants.

Sarai
Yeah.

Haley
Always great for me. I love that.

Sarai
Me too. So that's my most satisfying make. I love making something that I know I'm going to wear that's really satisfying to me.

And that is going to bring us into our topic today. But first, I want to mention that if you have an icebreaker for us for a future episode and you're a Seamwork member, you can leave at seamwork.com/go/icebreakers. And there's a thread there where you can post yours, and we'll probably use it on a future episode if you want to share that.

But back to our topic today, which is our satisfaction with our projects, which I think is a big topic. So in sewing, and I think in any kind of creative pursuit, you spend a lot of time in that kind of dreaming phase. And it can be derailing when your project doesn't end up quite as you expect it to, because you get so excited about what you're going to make. And then when it doesn't quite live up to that expectation, that can be a big disappointment.

And I think it can be really easy to give those misses a lot more weight than you give your wins.

This is a very natural human tendency. It's called a negativity bias, and we all have it to one degree or another, and it just makes it a lot easier to look at the things that you did wrong than the things that you've done right, which is unfortunate, but it's something that we can overcome if we're really intentional about it.

I think even if your project isn't a fail, even if it's not a terrible project or something that you really don't like, it's kind of like how when you cook a meal for someone, it never tastes as good to you as it does to them because you're the one who made it. And you're tasting all those trials and tribulations and everything that went into it and all the labor that went into it. And your guests are only tasting your delicious food, and they're not thinking about all of that. And they're not thinking about what went wrong.

When you spend a lot of time with your sewing project under a microscope and really thinking about every step of the way, it's hard to see the big picture and see what it really looks like in the end, because you're just so focused on those little details or any little mistakes that you made or how hard it was.

There's a lot of emotion wrapped up in that final project that I think can distort your view. So have you ever felt truly, truly satisfied by one of your projects, Haley?

Haley
Sure. And I think fairly frequently, like, I was kind of getting at before in the icebreaker. I think that sometimes I don't find projects super satisfying, but that doesn't mean that I have negative feelings towards them. I still think that they're fun. I still wear them a lot. But satisfying is, like, I don't know, reserved for those special things that maybe there's a surprise element to me with the satisfaction, where it just kind of, like with the apron kind of, like, surprised me how much I was just really loving it. There was something that was like a tactile satisfaction in the process of making it.

But I feel like when I first started sewing, I didn't feel super satisfied with a lot of things. And part of that is, like, obviously my skill level has improved, but also I have a different mindset towards my projects now.

Sarai
Yeah, I think it's interesting you mentioned surprise, because I do feel like it's always a surprise at the end. Whether it came out or not, it's always a surprise. And I think when you're a beginner, the surprises sometimes are not as positive. Sometimes when you're a little more experienced, you end up with more happy surprises.

Haley
Yeah.

Sarai
I've been thinking about this because I am filming a lot of my projects for YouTube. I'm doing a lot of project diary style videos on YouTube and definitely check that out if you haven't checked out our YouTube channel already. But at the end, I finish the project. We go through all the steps together. You see me sew it, and then at the end, I try it on, and that's kind of like a reveal. And I feel like it's the same whether you're watching a video or doing it at home. There's always this kind of—did it come out? Did it not come out? I'm going to put it on and we're going to see.

And I feel like a lot rides on that moment and how you feel in that moment.

Haley
Yeah, I think I love the project diary format because I think it gives people that peek behind the scenes that even someone like you who's been sewing for a long time is really fantastic sewer, there’s a lot of surprise elements going into it, and there's misses. It's not just like what you see on an Instagram grid.

Sarai
Yeah, because there's so many variables. There's a lot of things you can control, and there's a lot of things you can't control or you can't fully control or predict.

Haley
Yeah. How often do you feel like you are really satisfied with your projects?

Sarai
Most of the time I'm pretty satisfied with them, especially if I've planned them out, like I mentioned. But of course, you always have those occasional things that you just don't either they're total fails or they just don't match up to what you envisioned originally, something about it is off.

These days, I'd say about 80% of the time, I feel pretty satisfied with what I make.

Haley
Yeah, I would probably agree with that. I think it's like maybe one in every five things or so that I'm just generally bummed by. Even if I'm not ultra satisfied, there was something, like, redeeming about it that lent satisfaction to it. It was fun. I learned something. It was just like an interesting experiment. And I think getting your satisfaction from those things and focusing on those elements make most things more enjoyable.

Sarai
Totally agree.

Haley
What do you think is the common denominator when a project does not meet your expectations?

Sarai
For me, I would say, I don't know if there's one common denominator, but I can name a couple things that I think are common patterns, which are often it's the fit. So if I didn't make a muslin, I didn't check the fit. I don't make a muslin for everything, but I do try to make a muslin when it's something that I'm going to have to do more fitting on or that's not too super loose or something like that. So if the fit is often, I can't salvage it. Usually, I think, unless it's something very complicated, like a pair of jeans or something like that, oftentimes I can salvage fit. But if it's something like that, I think that's when I get really disappointed because you just put so much time into it, and if you feel like you really can't make anything out of it, that's one thing.

I think the other common pattern that I see is with fabric. So if the fabric is all wrong for it, or the fabric does something unexpected, which happens also, like, maybe the fabric stretches over time, or there's a lot of different variables with fabric too.

So if there's something wrong with a fabric and it just doesn't go with a pattern, or it just doesn't work with a style or something like that, I think that's often one of the things that leads to dissatisfaction.

Haley
Yeah.

Sarai
What about you?

Haley
I 100% agree. I think that those two things can be the biggest wild cards in sewing, especially when fit and fabric combine forces to make something, like, totally unexpected. I have a good example of this. Recently, just last Friday, we had a photo shoot, and one of the fabrics I selected, we were shooting a jumpsuit, and one of the fabrics was this really lovely drapey, viscose, linen noir fabric. And we had a fitting. Everything looked great. We made some minor tweaks. We have it sewn in this fabric, and over the course of the day, the fabric just fell and fell and fell. And the cropped length of the jumpsuit all of a sudden, by the end of the day was like, floor-length. And that's one of those things where the fabric kind of worked against us and ended up causing a fit issue, even though we did everything you're supposed to do, everything was looking great when she first tried it on. I think that fabric can be such a surprise in so many ways.

Sarai
Yeah. And there's a lot you can do to mitigate that, to learn about fabric. So you can predict these things, but sometimes you just don't know how this one particular fabric is going to behave.

Haley
Totally. And I could have predicted that it might relax over the day. I didn't think it would relax by, like, three and a half inches.

Sarai
Yeah, it's the same with knitting. I think one advantage in sewing is that, yeah, it does take a long time to sew, for example, a dress or a coat or something, but not nearly as much time as it takes to knit a sweater. The same thing happens in knitting where it really depends on the fiber content, like alpaca or something that tends to grow a lot. It depends on the stitch pattern you use. And then, of course, the fit of the pattern itself. So you have those same variables, but you don't even see it until three months later. In my case, usually, at least.

Haley
How would you describe how you feel when something is not satisfying to you?

Sarai
Disappointed, I would say would be the big one. Sometimes a little deflated, a little demotivated at times. I get over that pretty quickly just because if you've been sewing for a while, you're used to fails. So it happens and you just kind of have to move on.

But I'd say the initial feeling is one of just kind of a little sad, a little disappointed.

Haley
Yeah. I feel like most of the time, I'm kind of like, eh, whatever. You win some, you lose one. Sometimes you eat the bar, sometimes the bar eats you. But unless the dissatisfaction comes from something that would have been avoidable if I would have made a muslin, I'm like, dang it, I should have just slowed down and done it.

Then I'll take a couple of minutes to beat myself up for it, and then I'm over it.

Sarai
Yeah, it's those shoulda, woulda, coulda moments that are kind of annoying, but they're also learning opportunities.

Haley
Yeah.

Sarai
I think that's the one thing that motivates me to make muslins is I don't want to waste time and have that moment.

Haley
Yes, sir.

Sarai
All right, well, we're going to talk about some of the things that you can do to help shift your perspective and find more wins in your sewing. And I think these are things that Haley and I have learned over the years that have really helped us, and hopefully they can help you, too.

So the first one I want to share is to give yourself some physical space from your project. So if you have one of these disappointing projects and you spend a lot of time on it. You're feeling disappointed, you're feeling annoyed, you're feeling angry with yourself. Whatever it is, give yourself a little bit of distance from that project for a while and just put it away and come back to it later. And that'll help you just kind of regain the perspective you might need to see if it's truly as bad as you think at this moment, or if maybe the emotions around how much time you've spent on it and seeing kind of all the flaws as you go might be distorting your view and making it worse than it really is.

So I think that's the first thing is just kind of finding that true perspective on it because it's real easy to get wrapped up in those feelings, and it's totally normal.

And the next thing, which is kind of related, is to identify what you're feeling and what's really bothering you about the project. So maybe after you've put it away for a while, maybe for a day, maybe two days, whatever you need, you could bring it back out and see, okay, how am I feeling about this? And what is it specifically that I don't like about it?

Because oftentimes you might just be so annoyed or whatever feeling you're having at the end of it that you're not really taking the time to analyze what it is that's actually bugging you so much. And that could be the first step to either fixing it or getting something out of it that's going to make you feel better. And that's what this is all about. This is all about making you feel better. Because the most important thing is that this doesn't derail your sewing completely. It doesn't make you feel like I was saying, demotivated. In the long run, it's okay to feel that way once in a while, but you don't want to let it take over and just completely stop your creativity going forward. So that's the next step.

So first you've given yourself some space, and then you've brought it back out, and you're thinking about what's bothering you about it specifically. At that point, you can determine if it's something that's worthwhile to fix or if it's something that you're willing to live with. So maybe that thing that's bothering you is not that big a deal. Maybe it's really just a tiny little thing, and you're fine with it. It seemed like a big deal at the time, maybe because you struggled with it so much, maybe because you spent a lot of time on it. But in actuality, maybe it's really not that big a deal. Or maybe it's something that you can fix. And I think giving yourself a little time and a little space can help you to sort of percolate some ideas about how you might be able to fix it.

And a lot of times, the things that we don't like about our projects are things we can actually fix. I mentioned before I was talking about fit. There are some things that are hard to fix after the fact. Sometimes bust adjustments or darts. Those can be a little bit tricky to fix after the fact at times, depending on what it is. Pants, jeans, things like that can be a little bit difficult to fix. But a lot of things are actually not that hard to fix.

Like for example, that dress I mentioned yesterday that I made. I finished it and I put it on and I really liked the way it looked. But it seemed really baggy in the back, so it looked really nice from the front. But when I turned to the side, it just looked really baggy in the back. So I looked at it and I pinched out some fisheye darts in the back and gave it a little bit more shape in the back and it was perfect. It looked great.

So sometimes if you just kind of think a little bit more analytically about stuff like that, you can find a way to fix it.

Then the next thing is to remember the three-foot rule. So this kind of goes with thinking about whether it's something that you can live with or not. If you have a mistake or a flaw in your garment and you can't see it from three feet away, trust me, nobody else is going to notice it.

Nobody else is going to notice it. Even if it's something bigger than that, a lot of times people are not going to notice.

Most of the time it's something that you will see and nobody else is going to notice. If there's seams that don't quite line up perfectly or there's a little pucker in your gathering or something like that, it might really bug you, but it might be the kind of thing that you would not even notice if you bought a ready to wear garment. And it had that you probably would not even see it. So that's something to keep in mind. I think that three-foot rule is really helpful in those circumstances.

Haley
Next time you're at Target getting paper towels or whatever you get at Target, go and look at the clothing and you will find all sorts of mistakes just like the one you were probably torturing yourself over.

Sarai
And maybe you aspire to have clothing that's better made than what you would find at Target.

Haley
Of course.

Sarai
But nevertheless, you'd probably be satisfied with a T-shirt from Target too. You probably wouldn't. So just try and keep that in mind and maybe don't hold yourself to too high a standard that it feels demotivating to you and maybe use it more as a learning opportunity.

And then finally, journal or catalog what you learned. So there's pretty much always something to learn from every sewing project, I think. Whether it's a success or a failure. There's probably many, many lessons you could take away from any of them. And that's why I like to keep a sewing journal myself.

So if it is something that is bothering you, or if you do have some kind of a sewing fail, just jot down a revelation or a sewing tip that you found or something that's going to make you turn this into a learning experience rather than just something that you find kind of frustrating or demotivating. And that's the best way to put what you learned into action later is to actually write it down. When you write it down, it cements it in your mind, and it'll help you to remember it for the next time.

When I say write it down, it could be in a notebook, it could be in a journal. You could also, if you're a Seamwork member, you could post your project on the community and share your learnings with other people. That's one thing that I like to do. It's really, really helpful, and it'll help other people as well. And you'll have a nice little catalog of all your projects with photos there and what you learned, and you'll really get to see your skills build over time, which is I think is really nice.

Haley
All right, I have a few more tips to add to those awesome ones. I think another way that you can take that idea of journaling or cataloging your projects a step further is to look at your upcoming project queue and just see if there's anything that you can apply those lessons to in the near future.

Maybe you're making something out of a similar fabric, maybe you weren't planning on making a muslin, but now you're having second thoughts about that. Go ahead and add those to your project plans for any upcoming projects so you can maybe save yourself a little dissatisfaction in the future.

If you're still feeling unsure about the garment and you're, like, not really sure if you're willing to call it a success or not. I have a couple of ideas for dealing with that. Something that I like to do is I like to play a little dress-up with my new garment, take it into my room and start trying it on with different things in my closet, styling it different ways.

Maybe you were, like, kind of bummed about the way the sleeve cap was looking. How do you feel about it when you put a jacket or a cardigan over it? What if you wear a necklace with it and distract? I don't know. Maybe you won't know until you play with it a little bit and see how it feels in real life. I think that seeing it in the context of an outfit, how you would wear it every day, helps you to get out of your head and zoom out a little bit.

Sarai
Yeah, I like that tip a lot. I think sometimes seeing something in isolation versus seeing it with other garments that you might wear with it really changes your perspective on it. Whether you're covering something up, like you mentioned with a sleeve cap or something, maybe it's the color seems like really not great to you. But then when you pair it with something else that happened with those Joss pants that I made and I posted about on YouTube, I made this pair of joss pants, and I wasn't crazy about the color, but then when I wore it with black, it actually looked really good. And a lot of people left comments saying the same thing. They're like, well, I didn't really care for the color, but then when you put it with a black sweater, it actually looked really cool.

So I think that's a really good tip if it's something like color or fabric or print that you're not so sure about.

Haley
Totally. I think another way that you can help yourself to zoom out of it is to go take it for a test drive. Go wear it to a low-stakes kind of thing. You got to go to the gas station, return your library books, go to the grocery store. I do this all the time with things I'm unsure of or even just things in my closet that I'm like. I never wear this. I'm going to give myself a trial run out in public in it. And if I'm feeling weird or self-conscious, then it's going in the donate bag.

And then my final tip is if it's not working, if you've tried these things, you're still not feeling it, then it's time to move on. And you can do this in whatever way that feels really good to you. You can shove it in a bag in your closet and hide it in there for a year. That's my preferred method. I need a lot of distance. And then I'll make a final decision. I'll sell it, I'll give it to a friend, I'll donate it, whatever. Maybe you don't need that year long time-out in your closet.

Maybe you can just skip that and give it to a friend. But I think just kind of like moving on from it. If you've tried these things, it's not working. Then it's just time to move on. Maybe go make something that's a tried and true to get the taste out of your mouth.

Sarai
I think that's a good one. Personally, I know that if I put something away for a year, I'll probably never do anything with it. I'm not as good as you about getting rid of stuff. So I try to force myself to get rid of projects that I make that aren't really great or that I don't feel great about.

Haley
I'm a big fan of like, closet purgatory, and sometimes this doesn't happen all the time, but sometimes I'll take that bag out. I usually clear it out. It's actually not a year. It's every six months I try and do it. I'll look at that bag of a couple of garments, and sometimes there's, like, a garment that I'm like, why do I hate this?

Sarai
Yeah.

Haley
Why was I so bummed on this? It's fine.

Sarai
Yeah. Your tastes change, too, over time. So there are definitely things that I wish I had kept, because I'd probably wear them now.

Haley
Yeah.

Sarai
Things that were even basic stuff, but I just wasn't wearing it at the time, so I got rid of it.

Well, those are our tips for you for kind of reframing some of your sewing fails and finding more satisfaction in what you make by shifting your perspective. So I'm going to recap these tips for you.

One, give yourself some physical space from your project.

Two is to identify what you're feeling and what specifically is bothering you about it.

Three, determine if it's something that's worthwhile to fix or if it's something that you're willing to live with. And remember the three foot rule when it comes to this.

Number four is to journal or catalog what you learned.

Number five is to look at your upcoming project queue and see if there's something you can apply those lessons to in the near future.

Number six, if you're still feeling unsure to play dress-up with it and see how it looks with other garments.
Number seven is take it out for a test drive at the grocery store or somewhere like that.

And number eight, if it's not working, then move on in whatever way feels good to you, whether that's closet purgatory, donation, giving to a friend, whatever that is.

So those are our tips for you for kind of reframing how you feel about your sewing fails, and I hope that they're helpful to you. What's your big takeaway from this, Haley, today?

Haley
I think that my big takeaway, which is something I hadn't really reflected on prior to this, is that even the projects that I don't feel ultimate satisfaction with, I don't have bad feelings towards. I just have different feelings towards, whether that's just that they were fun to sew. I learned something. I feel like I've come a long way in terms of my mindset of how I view what I would have thought of as a huge failure years ago.

Sarai
Yeah, I think that's a good one. I think my big takeaway is, we've talked a lot about fabric today, and I think that's the big one for me is just recognizing what a wild card fabric can be. And I think that's a good reason to give yourself some grace around your projects is—you don't have total control. You're never going to have total control. And I think that's true in life, too. It's definitely true in creative projects like sewing.

The materials are always a factor, and so if that's something that maybe influenced the supposed success or failure of your project or how you feel about it, just as a reminder to give yourself a little space around that, because you don't have all that control, and fabric can throw you off sometimes.

All right, well, if you want to learn more about this topic or hear more about it, we have another episode called Letting Go of Mistakes that you might want to check out, so we'll put a link to that in the Show Notes, as well, if you want to think a little bit more about this.

And I also want to mention our free sewing planner. I mentioned Design Your Wardrobe earlier at the top of the show and how helpful it is for me to make sure that I'm sewing things that I love and that I want to wear and with fabrics that I love and go together. And our free Sewing Planner is a tool that we use in Design Your Wardrobe, and it's free for everybody. It's a printable planner that helps you design and plan your sewing projects. It includes pages for sketching looks, for planning out your individual projects with sketches and swatches, and you can print as many pages as you need.

And it's available totally for free at seamwork.com/go/freeplanner. And we'll put a link to the Show Notes in the Show Notes for that, as well.

And if you like this episode, we would love it if you would leave us a review. We have a review today we wanted to read from Amanda Freyer, and she said. “Two thimbles up. This podcast is bursting with great ideas and fun stories. I went back and listened to them all. I am an advanced beginner and learned so much listening to Sarai and Haley. I'm also enjoying the Design Your Wardrobe series. Thanks so much for all the things.” Thank you, Amanda. That's really sweet. What a great review.

Haley
Yeah, you're welcome for all the things.

Sarai
Yeah, you're welcome for all the things. We love making them for you. It's just so much fun. Making this podcast is so much fun. Making the YouTube videos is so much fun. Everything that we create for you, we have a blast doing it, and I just feel so lucky to be able to make this stuff for you guys and have you enjoy it and let us know that you enjoy it. So it's really wonderful.

And that does it for us this week. I'm Sarai.

Haley
And I'm Haley.

Sarai
And this is Seamwork Radio.