03 Sep Embrace the Oops: Even Experts Have Crafting Fails
Sometimes when we start a craft, it can tempting to see anything other than perfection as a failure. But messing up and trying again is part and parcel of practicing a hobby, whether you started ten minutes ago or ten years ago!
Here at Craftember, we want to encourage everybody to craft themselves healthier this September. Whether you’re focused on bettering your brain health, mood or concentration, the key is to craft with a little self-compassion!
That’s why we asked our ambassadors to give us their funniest crafting fails, to show you lovely crafters that even professionals aren’t perfect and how to ‘embrace the oops’ when things go wrong.
Here’s what they had to say:
“I have had many funny things happen in my job but I think the one that made me laugh the most was the first time I ever demonstrated on TV, my microphone failed and because I couldn’t stop what I was doing, the sound manager had to adjust everything from underneath my workbench while I was still live on air!” – Alison Board (Learningtopaint.co.uk)
“My biggest crafting boo-boo has to be when I was selling a set of crystal knobs. Yes Knobs to recycle furniture etc. Well I’ll let you imagine the direction it went. It disintegrated into 3 minutes of laughter and tears that was eventually turned into the Knob rap produced by one of the editors at the time. It still gets talked about many years later.” – Dave Bradford (HobbyMaker presenter)
“A fail ? thing is we all make mistakes but don’t think of them as failures think of them as learning points . However one quick story is when training at Wimbledon we spent the first few months making costumes for mannequins and unused pins were easily stored by stabbing them into the neck of the dummy…my first make was for an opera singer at the National Opera Studios…you guessed it when I had finished pinning his jerkin the old pin got stabbed into his neck ! I never did that again …you see not a fail, a learning point.” – John Scott (Sewing Street presenter / John Scott’s Sewing World)
“I’m not sure – spilling ink everywhere and it solving the issues I was facing with a painting?” – Molly Cawthorn
I was screen printing on my kitchen table, turned my back for a second and the cat jumped up and stepped through the wet ink, leaving his footprints everywhere they weren’t wanted! You can bet he also enjoys attacking my yarn when I’m crocheting too… just noticed that fail, funny and feline start with the same letter! – Nicky Ward (A Heart Shaped Cherry)
“When I first started quilting, I didn’t have a clue, I bought a sewing machine, some fat quarters, scissors and threads and thought I could make a great quilt – it wasn’t a great quilt, lol. I didn’t know that I needed a cutting mat, a ruler and a rotary cutter to get started.” - Tracy Perks (Rope and Anchor)
“Quite a recent one. Our department mascot, Dobby needed an overhaul and on unpicking one of his legs, I had sewn it on upside down… oops” – Sandra Rushton (Sanntangle)
“I was commissioned to make a huge beanbag chair for the Hobbycraft Ideas Hub – it was in collaboration for the new Joules fabric range launch. Somehow, after sewing the outer, when adding the inner beanbag filling – the bag split, and we had literally thousands and thousands of these little white balls all over our house. They were EVERYWHERE. We still find them even today!!” – Paula Milner (The Crafty Lass)
Share your crafting fails with us in the comments below or on social media tagging us in on Instagram or Facebook and using #CraftemberFail
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