Brush with disaster

(or, why you should always have a flight plan…)

I was buzzing along this morning, marking, thread-tracing, and cutting out my pattern pieces.  Because I was basting along the seamlines, I didn’t bother cutting the pattern pieces to a precise seam allowance, instead allowing a good 1.5-2″ border around the edges of each pattern piece.  I had finished marking and cutting out the four pattern pieces for the right side of the garment, and had just written a blog post about the benefits of thread-tracing seamlines, when I went to post this photo:

and somewhere through the back of my brain drifted a single word…”Interfacing?”

Oops.

I had planned to back the fabric with a fusible interfacing, to give it more body.  And had, of course, forgotten to fuse before marking.  Alas, fusible interfacing fuses to the wrong side of your fabric, meaning it would obliterate my carefully basted seamlines.  Worse, unless I removed the markings, the fusible interfacing would bond the stitches permanently into the fabric.  I would have to rip out the markings I had spent three days making, and start over.

Of course, I had already cut the fabric.  If I had cut it with the usual narrow seam allowances, I would have been toast, because I wouldn’t have had enough leeway to reposition the pattern pieces properly.  But, because I left giant, wide seam allowances, I have some wiggle room.  Thus, I can remove all the markings, fuse the fabric to the interfacing, re-position the pattern piece, and re-trace the seamlines.  This is absolutely the ONLY reason I’m not screaming at the walls.  Yes, it sucks losing three days of work, and it will be a royal pain to fix.   On the other hand, I don’t have to re-weave any ruined panels, so it’s not a total disaster.  But it was a narrow escape indeed!

So tonight I will go home and do two things:

1. Remove all my laboriously basted markings, fuse the interfacing to the fabric, and begin the slow, laborious process of repositioning pattern pieces and re-marking the seamlines.
2. PUT TOGETHER A PROJECT PLAN! so I don’t do this again.

The project plan will basically be a full set of instructions for what to do when, during the entire course of the sewing.  I can then proofread it and check it against my resources, to make sure I do the right things in the right order, and don’t screw up again.  “Winging it” has its place, but not on this project!