I may have mentioned once or twice that I’m in the middle of a “Sewing Do Over”.  And as I’m sure you all know, you can’t have a “do over” without having first attempted something and failed.  I also may have mentioned a few times that I have a tendency to “go big” and over extend myself when I’m excited about something.  If I haven’t mentioned it before, well… I do that.  I don’t just select one project and follow it to completion, I envision hundreds of projects and accumulate everything needed to accomplish them eons in advance of their likely coming to fruition.

With my first attempt at sewing, I started a few things that were never finished.  So great was my ultimate frustration level with sewing that I popped them in storage boxes and walked away.  That was roughly four years ago.  Maybe more.   A couple of weeks ago, I happened across one of these unloved, unfinished projects, and on a whim, I decided to finish it.

It was a bag designed to utilize the pre-quilted fabric you can buy at the fabric store, and inadvertently, it’s got that Vera Bradley thing going on.  I’m not necessarily in love with it, but I still think it’s cute.

As I laid out the pattern pieces that I’d cut out four years earlier, I was actually a little pleased with myself.  They were pretty terrible.  On one hand, it’s never fun to confirm that you suck at something.  On the other hand, it actually let me see that I’ve gotten a little better.  I could actually see the mistakes I made and even distinguish what I would do differently now to eliminate those mistakes.

I still had to rip out and re-do three times to get it finished.  (Sewing is an incredibly  humbling process for me.)  The lining has four pretty deep pockets-but I won’t be photographing them. The final result was not pretty…

But the bag itself is kind of pretty…pretty cute….not bad….and I learned doing it.  Which is always a good thing.