Sweater dress....thing

I'll be sharing more on Haley's Up! birthday party next week, but today I wanted to share a recent craft fail with you because we ALL have them....and I feel like I've been having more and more of them lately! Have you ever started a project with this grand idea in mind of what it's going to be, then halfway through realize "oh crap, this is nothing like I imagined."

That was what happened with this project.

I got it in my head to make a sweater dress for Haley since I absolutely adore little girl's sweater dresses. I imagined a cute little patterned dress with some pockets and maybe a pom pom tie at the waist.

This is what I actually made:

Notice a couple differences? Like, everything?


First, I found a sweater in my refashion pile that I thought would work. It didn't have a pattern, actually it was just plain brown, but I figured I could jazz it up with some pockets made with fabric that had a pattern. No biggie.

Then I got to work cutting the actual dress itself. I had some issues at first trying to keep the sweater lined up properly (man, sweater fabric is evil! It moves EVERYWHERE as you cut it) but I pressed on.

Next came sewing. My machine was not a fan of the ribbing. No worries...I just went back over the stitches a few times to make sure there weren't many holes. Then finally, I sewed on the sleeves and started thinking about the pockets.

And it was then that I realized my daughter's head would have to be the size of a doll's to fit into the opening.

Sigh.

It was then that I threw my entire plan out the window and literally free-styled this dress. I had to cut one of the shoulders open so that I could fashion a button closure that could be opened then fastened after Haley got the dress over her head. (Ever since I learned this method of making a button closure from Craftiness is not Optional, it's my classic go-to method for closures in general - especially when something turns out to be smaller than planned.) It may look pretty decent but believe me, the closure isn't as pretty as it should be. But it's functional and I didn't have to throw the whole dress away. I do love the flower buttons though, just more I dug out of my stash :)

After finishing the button closure, I was definitely not in the mood for making pockets but I felt like the dress still needed SOMEthing, so I cut a very crooked strip of lace to make a sash.

At that point, I was all "you don't even deserve a sash!"

The dress just mocked me.

So there we go, a free-styled, very imperfect sweater dress that actually turned out pretty well despite my best efforts. That's just how things go sometimes I guess.