A friend of mine, a fabric artist… back in the 80s, entered a weaving contest in a fabric arts magazine. She’d never done any weaving. She got some books, borrowed a loom, and decided to weave the fabric to make a seersucker shirt. It quickly turned into a nightmare. The seersucker threads kept breaking as she wove them. It quickly became a huge exercise in frustration, but she kept at it. She thought her difficulty was due to the fact that she was a newbie. Finally, after much struggle and heartache, she finished the weave, made the shirt, and submitted it to the contest. The magazine called a month or so later and said they were stunned by the piece, especially because you “can’t” hand-weave seersucker. She’d won the contest, and a ginormous, gorgeous Swedish loom that consumed most of a small room in her house. This is a perfect example of how you can do things when you’re ignorant of (or ignore) the common belief that you can’t. Sometimes ignorance is a huge advantage.
Via Makeonline, who is having a series on Maker “failures”.