The well decorated house, the perfect job, the handmade wardrobe, running a marathon, financial success… We all have our dreams. I get a considerable amount of pleasure thinking over some of mine. I work out all the little details and thinking how much better my life would be if those dreams came true.
One dream that I have been particularly passionate about, is the dream of being well dressed. I long for quality-made clothes that fit well and flatter me. It is this dream that has pushed me to attempt “Project 12”. So you would think that after planning and dreaming about sewing a dress for myself, I would be delighted to be sewing it, and look forward to finishing it up. Instead, I am finding myself getting a sinking feeling in my stomach as I continued to work on this project. Is the dress ugly? absolutely not. Did it fit me? yes. Is my husband totally blown away that I am sewing myself a dress? yup. But it isn’t turning out as I imagined.
“It’s OK, Jodi! It’s your first dress!”, my husband tells me. “Of course, it won’t be perfect. Your are sewing these projects to learn how to sew, and you are learning and getting better!” He is right, of course. But my dream is becoming real, but in becoming real, it is also becoming imperfect. In my dreams, seams are always straight, my stomach is flat, and the children put away their toys in the appropriately labeled bins.
So the question is, do I want my dreams badly enough to embrace them even while they become imperfect? Is living out our dreams imperfectly, less of a success than never living out our dreams at all?
I feel this way about photography sometimes.
I started sewing clothes almost 4 years ago, and I knew after my first class that I would have to work through some undesirable garments to learn what I needed to learn. I just made sure to pick projects that were simple to put together and focused on understanding fit better for the first year or two. The dress you’re sewing looks pretty good from here! Keep going!
Thanks for the encouragement! I probably was a bit ambitious with this project. 🙂
For the most part, it looks really great. There are some construction issues that cause wrinkles and I’m not super excited about the fit at the waist. But it really is my first big dress project. I need to go easy on myself.
Jodi, this is such a great post. I totally sympathize with you. However, the dress looks very cute! And I bet once you wear it for reals any minor things that bother you will be completely forgotten. You are right, go easy!
I think these sort of feelings are exactly why so many projects are finished last minute. (A silly bumper sticker quote that stuck with me: “Rome wasn’t built in a day. It was finished the night before it was due.”) I think projects are most fun when you can easily see that you are going to love the result. For me, it seems common to have grand schemes and then see a glimpse of what’s to come and suddenly get cold feet and start putting it off. I catch myself doing this all the time. At work at the end of projects, finishing that report.. in knitting when I’ve made a cute sweater for a certain sweetie pie one year old, but I don’t love the yarn so I keep putting off sewing on the sleeve….
So always, just do it! And probably it will still be fairly awesome. And in the very worse case it will be off the to-do list leaving room for a more fun project.
Now to get offline and take some of my own advice 😉
xo