Stop. Think. Then try again.

When I woke up yesterday, I had the powerful urge to begin mocking up my Hogwarts robe (by which I mean, creating a pattern, then using said pattern to make the costume out of junk fabric to make sure everything fits together right. This junk-fabric version is called a mock up.). My robe gameplan was to Frankenstein together several commercial patterns to get the look I wanted. This can be a dangerous game, so a mock up is essential to make sure everything looks the way you want it to.

But they didn't. As these things sometimes don't. So I redrafted the pattern and tried again--this time only making a mock up of the costume from the waist up (the neck/hood were what was really causing trouble). But it still didn't look accurate.

At this point, with a thoughtful scowl firmly rooted on my face, I turned back to the Sorcerer's Stone DVD to take another look at what I was trying to accomplish. And no sooner did I do that then I realized I had been severely overthinking the whole effing thing.

I didn't have to fuse together multiple patterns, I only had to do a few alterations to one pattern! It was all so simple and obvious, I couldn't believe I had missed it. I decided that maybe it was time to take a break, sleep on it, and have another go tomorrow (which is today. How's that for complex story-telling?).

So now I'm having another go at making this pattern. I'm out of the brown packing paper I usually use to draft patterns, so I'm using the reverse side of Christmas wrapping paper. It really adds a festive sort of something to the process, don't you think?