Creativity and Ruffles

One of my goals for 2020 is to come up with a good way to manage my sewing projects, especially in production mode. Right now, I do this thing where I say, “I am going to make a bunch of aprons,” so I cut out a dozen or so aprons and get them organized to assembly line together. So far, so good. Then I look at the pieces of fabric that are left from cutting the aprons and think, “Those leftover pieces would make great potholders.” The next thing you know, I’ve cut parts for two dozen potholders, but because I had to dip into the stash for backings, I’ve run across remnants that I want to use. Some of those remnants aren’t big enough for the style of apron I’m making, so I pull out patterns for other kinds of aprons. Eventually, I get sick and tired of aprons and potholders and want to make something else, so I look at Pinterest—the devil’s website—and the next thing you know, I am back in the stash looking for fabrics to make infinity scarves. By then, I am thoroughly frustrated with myself because I have too many ideas and not enough time and that makes me anxious. Also, the fabric room looks like a bomb went off in there. Again.

Too much creativity is as bad as not enough. Sometimes it feels like trying to surf a tsunami. When I am being disciplined, I will rein in my enthusiasm and force myself to complete the tasks in progress. I did that yesterday—I have a lovely stack of finished potholders now and this week, I will finish the aprons that are cut out before I start more.

I am hoping that being back at my transcription job a few hours a day will force me to prioritize more effectively, because this can’t continue.

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I was watching apron videos on YouTube again yesterday while finishing up the potholders. I ran across one video where the sewist used an interesting technique for attaching a ruffled edge. She marked the quarter markings on both the apron and the edging—which had not been gathered—then pinned the edging to the apron. She then divided the quarter markings in half again, so what she had was an apron with a length of edging attached to it at several places, but the edging was longer than the edge of the apron and therefore looped up in each section. She began sewing the edging to the apron by folding up a bit of the excess edging, putting it under the foot, sewing half an inch or so, and repeating that step. The method was halting and stuttered, but eventually she did get the edging attached to the apron and it was ruffled. Sort of.

When I see people doing stuff like that, I have to stop and ask myself: “Is that a legitimate technique that I’ve never seen before and need to learn, or is that person a self-taught sewist who has never cracked a sewing book and is making it up as she goes along?” I am a self-taught sewist, too, so I can’t go lobbing stones at other people, but I’ve been around a lot of sewists in my life and I’ve never seen that before.

Speaking of ruffles—as if being distracted by fabric wasn’t bad enough—I want to put the ruffler attachment on Vittorio and play around with making ruffles. The instruction manual shows how to make ruffles:

And pleats:

I think that if someone went to the trouble of inventing an attachment for making ruffles and pleats, this is probably the preferred technique.