Quickie Question: When Good Crafters Make Bad Choices
By Twistie
It happens. We get seduced by a pretty color, a fabulous texture, an unusual possibility to the point where we don’t think through whether it’s really the right choice for the project at hand.
Once I found some gorgeous, shiny thread in a really fine weight and spectacular colors. I decided to try making some lace with it. Alas! I didn’t gauge the weight correctly for the pattern, resulting in a thin, wimpy look to the piece even as it sat on my pillow.
Further, I entirely failed to check the fiber content of the thread… which turned out to be a rayon/nylon blend. Yeah, stretchy nylon. When I pulled my piece off the pins after about thirty hours of work, it looked about like this:
… only in shiny magenta.
What about you? Did you ever make a spectacularly wrong decision about a material? What was the project? Can you laugh about it yet? Or is it still too painful?
Me, I can laugh. It’s been about twenty years and I learned a valuable lesson I never forgot: always check the fiber content before winding the bobbins.
