Making Mistakes

Mistakes. We all make them. Sometimes a mistake turns into a wonderfully happy accident. For example I'm going to show you a recent project I made to upgrade my shower curtain.

The curtain we had was ok. Since we needed something quickly to go with very blue tile in our old but new-to-us house two years ago, this worked fine.

Pretty flowers made from pindots that weren't too feminine, but still "went with" the blue in the bathroom. After two years of use, and many other pressing home improvement projects completed, it felt blah to me. Instead of looking for something new, I wanted to just update what still worked perfectly well. It has some pulled threads, but I thought adding some color would do the trick.

First I saw this on Pinterest (http://www.brettbara.com/decorating/free-sewing-patterns-and-tutorials/). Color-blocking is all the rage right now in home décor and fashion. I had a sewing workshop coming up at my house and thought it would be a great way to show off my mad sewing skills with a little DIY sewing in the main bathroom everyone would use. I even took step by step photos with the intention of posting a tutorial here, but made a pretty big mistake. Measure TWICE and cut ONCE is the rule for carpenters. It applies to seamstresses as well.

I measured. I even took photos of it. I even ironed beautiful mitred corners before sewing the color block to the shower curtain.

But I only measured in one direction. So it came out quite crooked. Just in time to show off to my sewing class participants. Oops!

And I kind of hated the way it looked. I also wasn't looking forward to ripping out all of those seams and resewing the same thing that I didn't even like. Back to Pinterest...(In case you're curious, there is a second shower curtain protecting the window. Installing glass block is way down at the bottom of our priority list for now.)

This popped up next. http://www.urbanoutfitters.com/urban/catalog/productdetail.jsp?id=27386259&color=050 Grainy, but the idea of adding individual water drops seemed so fun, but still just right for the main bathroom.

A few other vinyl alternatives showed up in my search as well. Just because something is in plastic, wood, concrete, whatever, doesn't mean it can't be inspiration for a fabric version. And so, my big mistake turned into this:

I LOVE how this turned out! Sometimes, a big mistake is a big disappointment. Sometimes, it can lead to something far more creative and exactly what you didn't even know you wanted in the first place. Don't be afraid of making mistakes! Just keep that seam ripper close by.