It Went Horribly Wrong: Your Worst Project

Dear Community,

Would you like to share which of your projects went completely wrong? Were you able to salvage or finish the project, or did it become a UFO (unfinished object), or did you abandon it altogether?

You can find great craft patterns here. You can ask the authors for help if you get stuck.

Oh, I’ve got a story.

Years ago, I wanted to sew myself a dress out of some checked fabric I’d inherited.

I’d picked out a pretty sewing pattern and cut everything out, sewed it all together, and then when I went to sew in the zipper, I noticed something was off. The fabric was puckering around the zipper… When I tried it on, I had bulges on my back…

When cutting the fabric, I hadn’t considered that the pieces cut on the bias stretch differently than those cut along the grainline.

After I tried to fix it somehow—which didn’t work—this dress unfortunately ended up in the trash.

I once finished knitting a sweater and sewed it together. Then I proudly tried it on and saw that something was wrong: one sleeve was quite a bit longer than the other—I’d simply miscounted the rows. So, I had to take one sleeve apart—try finding the threads used to weave in the ends, especially with dark-colored yarn—unravel the sleeve, shorten it, knit it back on, and sew it in. Luckily, it was the right sleeve: the one that was too long.

Woolly regards

Irene

🤭 I’ve had projects like that, too. It was supposed to be a raglan sweater with a great pattern, but the pattern wasn’t supposed to start until after the sleeves were put on hold. Everything fit—the raglan slope was long enough, the sleeves were put on hold—then came the pattern, and from then on it was worked only in the round. Somehow, after quite a few centimeters, it was already clear that something wasn’t right. 😇 Yes, that great pattern used up a huge number of stitches—I hadn’t taken that into account and hadn’t picked up enough extra stitches. 🙁 In the end, I unraveled the whole thing😉 and the pattern was pushed far down on my pattern wish list.

Years ago, I knitted a jacket out of really expensive yarn, with lots of cable patterns. I thought it was absolutely beautiful and it fit perfectly....

...then I washed it on the wool cycle and didn’t realize I had to turn off the spin cycle.... The 1,200 RPMs felted the jacket so badly that I couldn’t save it. I didn’t throw it away—I just couldn’t bring myself to do it—and it still fits my mannequin (size 36).

I once had a similar experience to Nadeleule’s. A gorgeous wool sweater—a design I came up with myself, knitted to fit my figure perfectly, dearly loved, and worn often. But then: I accidentally selected the wrong cycle on the washing machine. Total loss! I was sooo annoyed!