Brain degeneration at age 33

I’ve been doing nothing but stupidities during the last couple of months. My doctor says it’s exhaustion. Being exhausted after having a baby? Seriously?

These stupidities – forgetting appointments, mixing things up, making bad decisions, wounding family members – affect me in many activities. These include sewing, as proves the story of Norah’s new Winter coat (for which I used this pattern).

It started with the fabric choice. Solid yellow, for a jacket for a child who plays in a sandbox at school everyday? The average 90-year-old Alzheimer patient would know better.

Of course, after day 1, the coat had mud stains all over. According to Norah, this was because a boy spat on it. Mmmmmm. If that is true, I would strongly recommend this boy to eat less sand.

After cleaning the coat, I thought I’d speed up the drying process by putting a hot iron on the front. Of course, the wool started felting immediately. Well done, Einstein!

But things also went wrong when I was cutting the pattern pieces. For instance, I made rather wide pocket flaps, with the intention of making them more narrow after I’d have a chance to measure the flaps on the previous version of this coat. Evidently, I ended up attaching them without measuring first, and now the coat has flaps which are completely out of proportion. Hurray for me.

I’m happy with the sleeve flaps, though. Piping is never a bad idea.

Despite all the stupid mistakes I made, Norah is crazy about her coat. Firstly because it has real pockets instead of the faux ones of last year’s version, and secondly because I lined it with some sheep-esque kind of fabric. In between the yellow and the sheep is a layer of Quilter’s Dream Cotton Select, bought here.

In sum, this coat is a failure, but a very warm failure!

(Yellow & sheep: Strass; buttons: Veritas)