So Wearing History posted recently on The Myth of Perfection. TLDR; we all have real lives, and aren’t just prancing around in pretty princess dresses (which were all finished completely on time, without sewing in the car/airplane, and definitely have all the seams finished).

I do my best to show my mistakes on this blog, to prove that I did not spring fully formed as a costumer out of the aether. So, here’s one that happened last week.

A friend gave me a cute maxi skirt of hers that was otherwise destined for goodwill. It was obviously too long on me, but I figured I can give this a quick hem (or not, since jersey won’t ravel) and boom, cute skirt for summer!

Put the skirt on, stuck a pin in the bottom near my ankles.

Measured the pin to be 12″ up (yes, this skirt was TWELVE INCHES too long). Marked 12″ up around the whole skirt, then cut along the markings.

Put the skirt back on.

WAT.

Yeah, an asymmetrical hem between my ankles and mid-calf on one side only was not what I was going for. I double checked the piece I had cut off to see if my measuring was horrible, but it was consistent the whole way around. No idea if the original skirt was meant to be asymmetrical, or just had the worst hem-job of all time.

I pondered sewing some of the hem back on to get interesting patchwork-seams on the bottom of the skirt, then remembered this was supposed to be a quick project and chucked the skirt into *my* goodwill pile. Note to self, on things with untrustworthingly-long hems, measure from the floor, not the hem.

Yep, I can make a contest-winning Robe a la Francaise, but I can’t hem a maxi skirt.

a metaphor for my skills