The past several weekends, I’ve woken up feeling sad. Not wanting to be idle, I decided to find an activity that I could lose myself in. Something meditative and soothing, but an activity that I could finish faster for instant gratification.

Enter sewing. I’ve documented my sewing attempts on and off the past several years on this blog, but I found it to be an intimidating process. Lately though, I’ve been finding myself eager to start trying again, especially since I don’t really feel comfortable shopping at stores. What better way to embrace slow fashion than to make something for yourself?

For my weekend make, I decided to pick up a project from Sanae Ishida’s book Sewing Happiness. It’s about finding her way back to health and happiness through sewing after getting fired from her job. I picked it up in a bookstore when Husband (then Boyfriend) and I were visiting Tuscon four years ago. I too was going through a difficult period at work and found her essays inspiring. In fact, the very first couple of posts I made on this blog (opening up with a piece of “art” I made) was directly inspired by her blog. (As you can see, I abandoned that pretty quickly because my “art” is not meant to be shared with the world).

I’d purchased the material for the yoga pants years ago. I dug the fabric out of my closet and traced the pattern, drafting from a pair of my favorite yoga pants as directed by the book. Time to cut the fabric.

This is the part where you say, “Why did you lay out your pattern on the fabric like that? Do you want to completely waste all your material?” And this is where I tell you I am a noob.

This is always where you say, “Wait a minute, weren’t you just telling people several weeks ago that masks were too hard for you to make? But now you’re making yoga pants? What?” And this where I tell you that, if I sat down and really worked at it, I could make a mask, but my motivation to make functional clothing outweighed my motivation to make something that inherently depresses me. This is not a great excuse, but here we are. (Also I have very awesome family members who made me some masks).

OK COOL NOW THAT WE GOT THAT OFF OUR CHESTS.

As I started cutting into the fabric, I started feeling the melancholy lift.

As I progressed with the project, I was both very excited that I was actually making pants, and a little dismayed since these were pants that probably would have fit me back in 1992. Sure enough, when I tried them on, I couldn’t pull them all the way up to my waist. Oops. I trimmed the pant legs considerably so I could put them all the way on.

Ta daaaaaaaaa!

I am very clearly in the “zero effs” stage of quarantine hair. I am not even trying anymore. I do have a hair appointment scheduled for next month at a salon, everyone will wear masks, etc etc I am about to shave my hair and/or set it on fire SEND HELP PLEASE.

Also, why does the middle picture look like she’s about to lead her doppelgangers into a round of “Y-M-C-A”?

ANYWAY. Yayyyy yoga pants? They kind of fit? I’m only showing you the front because, REAL TALK, they don’t sit very well in the back, and if I showed you what it looks like from the back, then this would be a VERY DIFFERENT KIND OF BLOG, FRIENDS. So needless to say, I cannot ever wear these pants in public. Or even around the house, because I don’t want to constantly be pulling my pants up every time I take two steps.

I want to make it clear that the book’s instructions made this project very easy. Clearly this failure was a result of my inability to draft the yoga pants pattern correctly.

However, this was a great experiment and I think it eased my sewing fears a bit.