This One’s For Me

Ask any crafter about their Works In Progress (WIPs) and your answer will be a mumbled one, heavily tinged with guilt. We all tend to have a lot of WIPs often hidden away as we don’t want to face their accusatory stares as we start work on another new project instead. Personally, I also seem to have a few projects that are no longer quite WIPs; they’re fully finished items that I am no longer happy with.

Take this top for example. It was created following this gorgeous pattern from Lilla Bjorn which I fell in love with immediately, as I did with the hand-dyed yarn from the immensely talented Folkstone Harbour Yarns which is dyed using all-natural dyes – perfect, as are the colours.

I chose to follow the pattern according to the 2XL sizing and I loved making it and planning out the colour changes, which are reversed on the back of the top. However, when it was finished and I tried it on, I was not happy with the finished outcome. It just didn’t look nice on me mainly because it is too big for me.

This was the first item of clothing that I had ever made and on the one hand, I was very proud to have completed it, but on the other, I wasn’t confident enough at that point to make any changes.

And here is the moral of this story – handmade items like this, either made by yourself or bought from a business like mine, are the perfect fit with the idea of sustainable fashion. Why? Because I am going to undo it and start again! I could then decide to make it into a completely different item but I am going to follow the same pattern as I love it but I will make sure that I fully tailor it to my shape in the sizing and the assembly of it.

I’ll update you on my progress!