Project. Run-away.

I wish I could make my own clothes. I wish I could take a blue bedsheet or a curtains or placemats or even legitimate fabric bought from a store and transform it into something stunning.

In college, I had friends who could make things. As our four years flew by, they created quilts, hats, shawls, skirts, pajama pants- you name it. I crocheted a very ugly hat that my friend wore in a play once. And I started to make a pink polka dot dress, until we realized it was about three sizes too small, and I just gave up.

The other night, while watching Project Runway, I snipped the plain green buttons off of my Old Navy Jacket and added funky vintage buttons instead (after looking for advice on how to dress well on a budget). The coat transformed into something new and beautiful. I felt so talented. I thought I had tapped into a previously hidden talent for fixing old clothes (thoughts fueled, no doubt, by the heroine in Queen of Babble) and could move onto other clothing projects I had sitting around: like my green wrap-around skirt with the bohemian pattern.

This skirt has been sitting in my closet for two years. I ripped it my senior year of college, on the way to a friend’s graduation party. I was sitting in the back of the car (which I hate) when we stopped at the Wawa to get gas. I climbed out of the back and stepped on my skirt. It promptly fell to the ground. I shrieked, “OH MY GOD, I’M NAKED AT THE WAWA!”, which is when the entire gas station turned and looked and saw me- not naked, but bottomless, at least, at the Wawa.

It took two years to heal enough to even consider fixing the skirt.

Inspired by my recent success with the jacket, this morning, before work, I decided just to sew that tie right up, good as new. It took less than ten minutes. I was feeling like a project whiz, like I might as well audition for Project Runway and start designing my own clothing line. I was visually planning my spread in Elle magazine.

And then I untied the ties (I’d left them tied when I sewed the skirt- it just seemed easier) and discovered that, somehow, I’d managed to sew the skirt so that one of the ties connected to both ends of the skirt and one wasn’t sewn on at all. It was completely un-wearable. My fashion dreams fizzled.

But I’m still in the market for other projects…