Just Passed Me By

“Failure is a detour, not a dead-end street.”
-Zig Ziglar

I consider myself pretty artistic and pretty crafty. Not necessarily the most artistic or the craftiest, but I think I can hold my own. Granted, I had a great inspiration. Both my mom and my grandmother had quite busy craft/sewing rooms as I was growing up. Crafts were encouraged—at the age of three, I had a “craft center” where I could store all of my kid-friendly supplies. Through the years, I’ve received countless kits as gifts, taken numerous lessons, attended lots of workshops, and spent God-only-knows how much money at Michael’s, all for the sake of crafts.

My mom gave me her old sewing machine, circa mid-1980s, to use as my own. I’ve piddled around here and there, making a couple of gifts and hemming a few pants. But every time I sit down at the machine, I am bombarded with the fact that the sewing gene just didn’t get passed on. I love to sew, I really do. But I’m really not so good at it. And sometimes that’s just hard to come to terms with.

This weekend Rob asked me to patch one of the knees of an old pair of jeans. Granted, this pair of jeans is long past its prime, and I probably should have just refused to even touch them. But he had faith in me and my sewing “skills,” so I thought, I can probably handle this.

An hour later, I was mad at myself because I had totally ruined his pants. The first patch I put in was much too large, and so I attempted to narrow it. Then there were two huge puckers on either side, and then when I tried to rip out the stitches, I just ended up ripping the pants. If you can’t picture that, then you’re the lucky one.

I moped around for a bit, frustrated with my failure. But two days later I have a new outlook and a new goal. Callie’s wedding is in four months. And I’ll need something to wear to the bridesmaids’ luncheon and rehearsal dinner. That means I have four months to make a dress for myself, maybe even two!