During the 2020 (and beyond!) pandemic, I started sewing. This blog is about my journey to becoming an amateur sewist, warts and all.

My name is Lee Skallerup Bessette, I am a writer, and I also have ADHD. This isn’t all of who I am, but it is important to know about me to understand why I created this sewing blog. Sewing is my latest hyperfocus, but also can only ever hold about 90% of my attention. I miss details. I read instructions too quickly and confidently. I can’t quite visualize what the images and written directions say, and sometimes, the tutorials and videos skip over steps that seem obvious to them, but mystifying to me. This is blog is part pattern reviews, part narrating my mistakes, part explaining techniques that didn’t make sense to me until I could explain it in my own neurodivergent way.

I am also borderline plus-sized (47-42-49), so I’m also documenting sewing as someone who is on the edge of moving out of “straight” sizes, and trying to better dress for my post-pandemic body.

I chose the name Comedy of Errors after the Shakespeare play. It both betrays my literary training but also how you should approach reading this blog. Like Shakespearean comedies, the errors are obvious to those watching the play, even if the actors are “oblivious” but at the end of the day, everyone lives happily ever after. I’m not interested in perfectly finished seams, perfectly straight lines, or even the perfect fit (yet). I just want to make clothes that I can wear and feel good about myself in, not just because I look good, but because I made this. I stumble, a lot, but the ending is usually happy, even if it is forced.

The header image I chose for this site is the seam ripper, a clumsy sewists best friend. Mistakes will be made. Tear the seams, start again.

Anyway, head over to the blog, and read about my sewing (mis)adventures!