On Altering a Button-down Shirt and Being Passionate

A while ago I bought a skirt and shirt from Goodwill (gotta love the savings!) with the intention of wearing them to my ballroom dance class. I knew right off the bat that the shirt would need some serious work. Bag city. I have fairly broad shoulders so the shoulder seams hit me fine but the body was obviously made for someone quite a bit wider around the middle. (It doesn't help that I just finished dieting--lost 16 pounds, woohoo!--so now it is even baggier.) I couldn't pass up on this shirt though. It just goes so well with the skirt!

Dancing is one of my passions. I am passionate about so many thigns! And one of my problems is that I'm almost afraid to share that with the people around me. What if they can do it better? What if I spazz out? (Which I tend to do when I'm excited.) It all comes back to the fear of people judging me. But what am I showing them by hiding who I really am and how much I love things, and life, and activities? I'm presenting a mouse and that's what they see and how I feel around them. What good is that doing me?

The moral of the story: it's okay to be passionate! It's okay it get jittery when you walk into JoAnn's, like you just took a great bit snort of something less than legal. It's okay to talk a mile a minute about the intracasies of French seams.

And of course there is someone better! There's always someone better at this thing or that but only YOU, only I, have this combination of skills at whatever level of mastery. Maybe your passion isn't going to be everyone's cup of tea--maybe they don't even like tea and are more coffee people--but in the words of whoever said them, "Those who matter don't mind and those who mind don't matter."

Okay. Motivational rant over with. Onward!

I'm going to take off th sleeves with the good ol' seam ripper and bring in the side seam. Just doing a straight line. I'm not worried about it being super fitted. (The way the fabric drapes makes it perfect for just a loose cut but right now the loose is more like a swamp.)

*20 minutes later*

Okay, I've been on the same sleeve for a while now and it is not going very well. This fabric is kind of a loose weave so the threads are all getting caught up in the ripper. Ugh. Any tension I put on it separated the fibers.

Okay. Plan B. Or "Winging It" A, depending on how you look at it.


Stay tuned from the next instalment of "On Altering a Button-down shirt and Being Passionate."

What are you passionate about? Comment below.