Do you ever just... forget how to sew?

[gem]

LOL... except not really. 

I am not a natural seamstress.  It takes me *ages* to figure out how to do things that other sewists just whip off in no time.  I've been doing this for a bit, though, so I am amassing *some* knowledge and experience, but one of my hurdles is that I all too often forget how I did something the last time I did it!

Right now I'm working on a bodice for a gown.  This will be like my, oh, fifth or sixth bodice (made three last summer alone!), so you'd think I could put it together in my sleep, right?  Oh, no.  No!  I'm currently looking at my heap of pieces, trying to remember how, exactly, they all go together.

So, anyway... I'd love to hear from some experienced garb-makers who also suffer from Sewing Amnesia.  It's one thing for beginners not to know how to do something... but when you've done it umpteen times before?  Sheesh!  That's getting ridiculous.

Please tell me I'm not alone....

[armywife]

Well, you at least have me, lol!  I have a bodice sitting in my 'to-be-completed' box, and I look at it with great puzzlement.  Funny thing is, I cut it out last year...and have made a couple of bodices since then, lol!  It's not a plaid or patterned fabric.  Yet there it sits, taunting me, mocking me for my inability to complete it.

[Kate XXXXXX]

Not alone at all, love.

I have a mental block about fly zips...  Like on jeans.  EVERY SINGLE TIME I DO ONE I have to look it up in the Book of Nollij and learn the steps all over again!

Normally I can do zips in a flash.  I have no trouble with open-ended jacket zips and basque zips, no problems with concealed zips, and even zips in stretch and bias cut things go in easily.  But fly zips? PFFFFRT!    I think it has to do with the fly shield and remembering which bits go on the right and which on the left.  Not my strongest suit, lefts and rights.   

I got over a similar blank space in my head about welt pockets when I made 25 waistcoats with two welted pockets in each in one week.  Somehow the thought of doing 50 fly zips in one week does not appeal!

When you work out how to put the bodice together, document it with photos of every step.  Make a nice big noticeboard of it, and nail it to the ceiling.  Every time you look heavenwards for help, there it will be!   

[LadyStitch]

I had a block on how to put in the yoke on a shirt I had just made.  It took me 6 tries before I realized I was making it entirely too complicated.  I even looked at my mock up again.  I felt like such an idiot! Once I got through that i had 2 shirt done in 2 hours.  I had lost 3 days being stuck and completed it in no time.

[LaurenLee]

   Sure... when I am sewing something with a lining, and they tell you to "turn" it at one of the open seams, I can manage to forget how to get it turned properly without a twist in it EVERY TIME.  Especially a vest (for a Victorian gentleman), or, as I discovered last night, a men's doublet!!!    I think the following sentence is part of every seamstress's vocabulary at one time or another:
         "Now how did i do that last time?"

LaurenLee

[Adriana Rose]

I have done that too!

just stare at the pattern then the pieces


I have a frock coat that I have been working on for uhh 2 years now and there are pieces that have no place to live! So I gave up and now its in the process of being turned in to a sleeveless!