"Polyester brocade, YOU are the weakest link..."

Goodbye!

Readers, I tried, really I did.  But this polyester brocade fabric was the worst possible choice for my 1953 dress project.  Well, maybe not the worst -- polyfleece might have been the worst.

Here's how things looked after just a few hours of work. 

I'd forgotten (ignored?) that this fabric has the drape of a canvas tarp and the kind of vertical and horizontal pattern that nauseates on the bias -- IF you can even line it up correctly.

Readers, I'm a big believer in cutting one's losses and OK, so I'd already bought a spool of orange thread and an orange invisible zipper; I wasn't investing any more time in this fabric-from-hell-via-the-crappiest-fabric-store-on-35th Street-that-only-cost-$2/yd-and-now-I-know-why.  I'd had it. 

Did I mention that it frayed so badly I had to cut the skirt panels out with pinking shears, and it was so slippery and shifty I ended up with about 2 inches more skirt on the the left front than the right front -- this despite their matching perfectly in length and being pinned together? 

I guess I should thank you, loyal followers: you knew this was a bad choice but in your infinite wisdom decided it was a lesson I needed to learn for myself. You intuited correctly that if you'd tried to talk me out of it I only would have resented you forever.  So, thank you!

I'm not sure what to do with the remaining three yards of this stuff -- burn it or give it to the Salvation Army.  Is anyone doing "Kismet" at their local community theater?  How about "The King and I"? "Flower Drum Song"? 

Not to let my fabric setback ruin my day, I squeezed a visit to the fabric store into my already-overbooked afternoon.  I turned over bolt after bolt hunting for something that felt like 1953 and friends, it was tough.  Finally, I settled on this: 

It's a lovely cotton sateen in oyster; maybe a little bridal for a with-it girl like Cathy, I'll admit.  But it was cheap and now I'm thinking I'll do the dress in this and pick up a yard of the black they had in the same fabric for the jacket.  Otherwise she's going to look like something served on the half-shell.

As if that wasn't enough drama for one day, I go running in the late afternoon and I trip.  And I fall.  But not just fall: I take one of those epic flops one associates with four-year-olds -- a running skidding-along-asphalt spill that if I'd been forty years younger would have sent me crying hysterically into my mother's arms, and twenty years older sent me to the ER.  Instead I just picked myself up and completed my run.

I don't want to upset you, so I won't show you my right knee or (what's left of) the skin of my left palm.  But here's my right shoulder (I know: knee, hand, and shoulder too?).

Luckily, my face was unharmed.  Is there something going on with Mercury, astrology nuts?

Readers, have you ever abandoned a project after just a few hours, dumped your fabric and started anew, or just moved on to something completely different?

Should I have struggled longer, pinked further, tried to make that exotic orange into something, if only a tablecloth or sewing machine cover?  I really just want it out of the house -- and fast.

Can I just heal today and sew tomorrow?

Happy Tuesday, everybody, and watch your step!