Wrinkles in my creative sewing

Creating is all very relaxing if it goes well, but I've "got a wrinkle" in my current creating. I wrote back here about sewing some long pants for my boys. But I keep running into problems and it's getting annoying. Most of the problems are my mistakes, so I'm annoyed at myself. 

For starters the pattern I'm using is for small children, so I've had to add length and width – not too much of a problem, but not as easy as just tracing a pattern, pinning and cutting out. It takes me a while to get my head around the spatial issues with sewing; it really is my chief problem (and with packing boxes too). This all added the issue of how much material I should buy, which has turned into a major problem, as you'll see.

Then the boys requested pockets, which weren't on the pattern. I thought I was doing well when I found this blog by an amazing Indonesian lady who lives in Japan. I love the name of her blog: VeryPurplePerson. She makes her own clothes and blogs about them very well. Here I found a helpful tutorial about putting side-pockets into pants/trousers (whatever you like to call them). 

All very good, except that the pattern doesn't include a waistband and you have to make your own pattern. No worries, I added some length for the inbuilt waistband. But it turned out I didn't add enough. The pocket openings are too small to fit their hands into. So I've had to do some (and yet to do some) serious modification. In the case of one pair, I will have to add an extra bit to the waist and in the case of another, will have to add a bit to the top of the pocket lining. All very frustrating.

But the biggest frustration is my miscalculation on how much material I would need. I got it right – but only if the material was 1.20m wide. As it turns out the material is only 0.9m wide. So I went back to get more material for the third pair, but I didn't get enough. I figured that out as soon as I laid it out for cutting. And dashed back for the third time the next day for more. Unfortunately I encountered every sewer's worst nightmare: they'd run out of the material I was using. The lady who'd served me the day before kindly explained that they had some 20cm sections I could buy if I wanted. (I could just imagine the back of my 12 y.o.'s pants made up of a patchwork of 20cm sections of material!) Then she said they'd reordered it and it should come in about a week . . . IF the manufacturer was still making that colour. Arggghhhh!

(Mind you I was pretty happy that I'd managed all of this in Japanese!)

Today, nine days later, I dashed back to the store in the hopes that it would be there. But no, it isn't. This shop attendant could give me any information I didn't already know.

So I'm left with two alternatives. I wait another week and drive back again (getting annoyed at going to this shop, however, it is not too far away, but means going across railway tracks and heaps of traffic lights, though I guess I could also ride). Or I can take a sample and catch a train a few stations to a different shop and hope for the best. This is just taking too much time and money for my liking, if only it were simpler. I really don't like it when things take up more time that I'd like them too. 

So, a creating project that is turning bad on me. Maybe I should have a go at overcoming some of the pocket issues tonight and maybe then I'll feel a bit better about the project. It is so easy to give up on something like this when you hit a snag.