Scaredy Cat Challenge

If you read last Sunday’s post (I’m in stitches!), you’ll know that I’m trying to follow Jonathan Roche’s wise words and jumping in with both feet whenever I feel scared about doing something.

My first challenge of the year is to make an apron using a sewing pattern that came with two pages of instructions. I know, I know, hardly life-threatening stuff, but it certainly stopped me in my tracks! 😉

Needless to say, this week has flown past with lightening speed and late yesterday afternoon (Saturday) I still hadn’t started… With today’s blogpost looming (oh the shame!) I decided to go for it. Set my Flylady timer for 15 minutes and started cutting out the paper pattern pieces. Then read the instructions from start to finish. Go me! 🙂 Another 15 minutes on the timer and I had cut out all the pieces of material. Okay, so maybe I skipped the part of cutting out the bias strips – but, honestly, by this time I had blood on my teeth and was itching to get sewing!

The first ‘deer in headlights’ moment came when I had to do gathers in the bodice. Yes, you read that right. Bodice. This is a very swanky apron. Never done gathers before….aarrrgh! But I just followed the instructions, (checked the instructions 50 times) and voilà – who’s a clever girl then? 😉

Then (lucky me) I got extra practice in doing gathers because this pinny is reversible. That means two sides. Which is, of course, extremely practical when you’re cooking but makes this whole sewing project take double the time…

Sunday morning arrives and I’m now feeling rather cocky about this whole sewing thing. Hey, maybe I can make some nice summer tops? I’ve got some simple patterns that I bought 3 years ago…where did I put them? Reality check: I need to finish this blinking apron first! 😉 So time to stop daydreaming and get back to some serious one-on-one time with my Janome machine. Thank you DH for going to work today and special thanks to the Wii and Nintendo DS for babysitting 🙂

The pinny is now beginning to look like one. And a very nice one too, even if I say it myself. I’m already at instruction number 5 out of 7 – hooray! But I’m beginning to get that ‘pit in bottom of stomach’ feeling again about those pesky bias strips… Oh well, time to put the kettle on, listen to Jonathan’s voice and jump in again.

Another update next Sunday. Have a good one! 🙂

PS: If you’d like to join me in the Scaredy Cat Challenge, leave me a comment. As I said last week, we can hold hands and be scared together 😉