My Epic Fail for the Year

Luckily, it is only February 2 and I have already had my epic sewing fail for the entire year.  It all started Saturday when I had the entire day ahead of me.  I decided to sew a fleece jacket that I had been meaning to make for about four years.   I already had the pattern and the fleece.

Four years ago I successfully made the middle turquoise jacket.  It looked great and I really enjoyed it and fleece is typically pretty easy to work with, especially since you don't have to finish any of the seam edges.  So I bought the fleece to make the second from left purple jacket with an accent ruffle.  Everything was going great until I needed to make that ruffle.  It was a beast.  I tried to sew gathering stitches but the fleece was too thick.  I tried to gather the fleece after making the stitches but the thread kept on breaking.  This was a nightmare to the 5000th degree.  It took me three hours just to make that stupid ruffle and sew it onto the jacket.  And guess what: it didn't fit.  The ruffle was too small which resulted in it being a ruffle for most of the jacket but then not being a ruffle at the end.  See the picture to see if you can tell.   All I can see is a lame-o jacket.

Here is the ruffle before sewing

Here is the jacket without any help from me, gaping open wide because the fleece won't lay right.  At this point I debated just throwing the whole thing away.  I was so frustrated with the three hours I had just spent for a very lame result.  See how the collar is poofy?  That's because the layers are so thick that there was no chance at all for this jacket to lay right.   

 

So I debated throwing it away but knew that would be a rash decision made in the heat of the moment so I just stopped sewing and left the room for the weekend.  I went back to it this morning and thought, 'maybe I can finish it and give it away.'  So I started working on the sleeves, but they had the same ruffle at the end of them.  Here's what my sleeve looked like after adding the ruffle: terrible!!  That sleeve would never look like the one in the picture.  It would never lay flat.  

This was a disaster.  When I saw that sleeve I threw in the towel.  That's it!  I threw it all in the trash and will never, ever make that particular pattern again.  Ev-er.  Whoever made up that pattern and made that jacket didn't use fleece or they had the most heavy duty industrial machine ever.  What a terrible experience this was.  It even incited my rash comment blurted out in pure disgust, "I will never sew again!"  It was creating such negative feelings that I threw it away and went to go color some coloring pages, something to which I knew would turn out well.  May this epic fail be put away, never to be thought of again! 

*Lest you think all my endeavors are easy and turn out exactly as planned, I felt the need to include this failure on my blog.