Weekend Project: Blog Catch Up

Thank you so much to BConky, Mamafitz, Julia, Sarah E., Carla, Myrosia, Elaina, Debbie, Cindy, Shannon, Summerset, Becky and Sarah for talking back to my confession a couple of weeks ago! I confessed that I can mess up the simplest sewing tasks when I am tired, and asked if others have the same experience.

The answers were pretty unanimous:

1. It's not uncommon to make stupid mistakes when you are tired, stressed and/or simply not "in the mood" to sew.
2. When you start making mistakes, just walk away!
3. If you don't walk away, the mistakes will likely build on themselves and things will get worse and worse...

Interestingly, we had the same comment - I can't sew at night - from both a self-proclaimed morning person AND a self-proclaimed night person.

Only one specific cut-off time was mentioned - 9 pm - but it was mentioned by 2 different people. Summerset, for example, will do sewing-related chores, like cleaning up her work room or threading her sewing machine, but rarely does any real sewing after 9 pm.

Myrosia pointed out that this isn't just true for sewing - in her experience, it's true for work and for dancing. She also noted an interesting thing about tiredness - it probably clouds your judgement regarding what you are capable of doing at the moment - kind of like a tipsy person being confident that he/she can drive home safely.

Shannon had a great story about trying to sew simple elastic waist pants when she was tired, and actually attaching them incorrectly 4 times in a row - each time making a different mistake! That's practically genius - I could definitely mess up sewing on pants legs, but 4 different ways? I'm not sure I could do that if I tried! ;)

And Cindy said that, if you think you get frustrated when you make stupid mistakes out of tiredness, imagine teaching a class where ALL of your students are in this type of slump at the same time, and you can't "walk away" because it's a class... Yikes, that does not sound fun.

The 2 Sarahs summarized things nicely. Sarah E knows that it's not a good sign when she finds herself putting pressure on herself to get something done quickly. And Sarah points out that sewing should not be stressful - it's what we do to escape the stresses of the rest of our lives...

Thanks again to everyone who took the time to leave a comment! And I'm sorry I'm late with this follow-up post. I was on a business trip last week and time got away from me... Anyways, I don't feel like such an idiot and will try to learn to walk away in the future. :)

Photo credit: digging90650