from the ashes of failure

Greetings!

So, ever have one of those days where everything you try is a big fat failure?

Well, this is my story of one such day. Actually, my big fatty failure-ness spans over a couple days.

Here it goes….

I had big plans of making a hanging “wreath” (that’s not actually a wreath in the conventional sense) for my front door. I wanted to make some of those giant t-shirt pom poms. Anybody else seen these? I’m sure you have. So I picked out a few old t-shirts I was happy to repurpose and went to work. I did everything right, or so I thought. I cut out my cardboard templates, cut the t-shitrts into strips, wrapped it around the templates, cut the strips and…

ta-da!

A super fun pom pom!?

Um, no. Nope. Not even close.

Here’s what I got. Looks like something I’d use to wash my car.

Fail.

As you can see in the picture the strips of fabric don’t curl the way t-shirt fabric usually does. I guess it wasn’t really an actual for reals t-shirt to begin with. That’s what I told myself that night as I tossed and turned over my epic failure. And yes, failed projects keep me awake at night. But so do potential projects. Actually, I don’t ever sleep well. I’m usually awake half the night anyways, gotta think about something.

So I woke up the next morning determined to give it another shot with the “right kind of t-shirt”.

Guess how that turned out?

Yep, a pom pom explosion.

It was at about this time that Curtis walked into the room and found me ranting and raving and flinging fabric scraps around and banging my head on the table. Yeah, it wasn’t pretty.

Fail.

Again.

Ok, so it isn’t gonna happen. Just give up. Scrap the project. Go on to something else. Right?

Oh no.

Sometimes when projects don’t work out for me, I just get mad. And I hate giving up.

I was desperate to salvage the project. Somehow.

So I started again with a slightly different approach. I pulled out a couple styrofoam balls and fabric that I had. I tore the fabric into one inch strips.

I tied a small knot in the end and pinned it into the styrofoam.

Then I started twisting and wrapping.

I twisted the fabric very loosely and attached it to the styrofoam ball using hot glue. I kept twisting and wrapping until the ball was covered.

With the other styrofoam ball, I cut squares of fabric and randomly glued them onto the ball until it was covered.

I made sure there was no visible styrofoam peeking through anywhere.

For this one, I took a handful of the t-shirt strips from failure #2 and tied them together to make a mini pom pom.

Success!

Finally.

I painted an old thrift store frame bright yellow and hung the balls with ribbon.

I really am happy about how it turned out. I’m glad I kept going, even when Curt thought I was gonna lose it.

(At the time, I wasn’t so sure he was wrong.)

Truth be told, I like this version more than what I was originally picturing in my head.

So remember the pile of pom pom rubble? I hated the idea of just throwing it away. I wanted something to show for my hard work.

Can you guess what I did with the scraps?

If you said “make a garland” you get one hundred points!

If you hit a bump in the road, don’t give up. Keep going, keep working at it. Maybe you’ll find the end result much better than what you had envisioned.

I might not be talking about just projects anymore.

Until next time….

-Meg

Linking up to these parties:

Reasons To Skip The Housework

Someday Crafts

Blue Cricket Design

Lil Luna