Sewing woes

[wiseheart]

This week I've decided to finally finish Little Emma's quiet book; the one I've been working on for half a year or so.

For those who are interested, the individual pages can be sighted here, on my Pinterest board.

All I have to do is the binding, even though it's a bit tricky, as you'll see. I've sewn the long internal binding stripe with the help of Louise because hand-sewing twice 30 centimetres is boring and takes forever (at least for me). Louise did the job in five minutes, even though she has problems with sewing in a straight line (= I'm incapable of holding the fabric straight during the process), so I had to undo the whole thing and then redo it.

Reminder for those new to this place: this is Louise, my handmaid:



In any case, today I made the spine of the book, and when I compared it with the long internal binding stripe I realized that I've cut the fabric wrongly somehow. The two things should have the same width - 14.5 centimetres - but the spine is only 13 centimetres wide. Which means that I not only will have to re-do the binding stripe, I'll also have to cut away a lot of fabric, having hereby wasted material by both pieces... material that I could have used for another project. I only had this one piece of the lovely polka-dotted fabric (bought it on a rests sale for this book), and now I have a lot of cut-away rags that won't be of use for anything.

I HATE waste! Especially when it's been caused by my own stupidity. I mean, this is the third quiet book I've made with the exact same binding method, for God's sake! One would think I had it internalized by now!

Obviously, one would be wrong. *le sigh*

Comments

[meathiel]

*hugs*
It's not the end of the world, don't beat yourself up over it!

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

I know. It's just annoying. And a shame about the nice fabric. :(

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

I have a little sewing machine like Louise, too. I also have a bigger one, but the little one is so useful.

I hate it when I realise I've cut something out slightly incorrectly and it simply won't work.

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

I think I can still make the binding work, I'm just angry about the fabric I'll have to throw out, since it's cut into several little pieces now.

Louise would be even more useful if she could make more than one size of stitch (preferably a smaller one than she does) and if I could manage to hold the fabric straight. Alas, I'm not, and so the poor thing keeps producing wavy lines of stitches. *sigh*

[adafrog.livejournal.com]

Darn.

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

That about sums it up, yeah. *scowl*

[motodraconis.livejournal.com]

Gah! Little Emma's disquiet book!

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

Indeed. There have been quite a few things about this book that didn't turn out the way I hoped they would (although, fortunately, other people don't seem to notice this), and this was the last straw.

[elwenlj.livejournal.com]

I feel your pain. I've done stupid things like that too. I hate throwing away cabbage (tiny bits of fabric) especially when they were caused by my own carelessness.

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

Yeah, same here. Alas, ehenever something has to do with measuring and counting and generally with numbers, disaster is looming on the horizon.

[noadvertising.livejournal.com]

I always do stupid things like that when I put my projects away for some time then continue working. Too bad that now the fabric is lost!

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

I think I might be able to use some of the scraps for other things, although I'll have to be really creative to do so.