Week 3: What's Worth Finishing?

Welcome to Week 3 of Making Space to Make! We've spent the first two weeks building a foundation through understanding how you actually sew and defining what "organized enough" means for you and your life. This week we're doing a project assessment to figure out what's actually worth finishing versus what's just taking up space — both physical and mental.

Why This Matters

Unfinished projects aren't just taking up physical space in bins, bags, and the corners of our sewing rooms, they're taking up mental space too. If you’re at all like me, every time you see that project you've been avoiding for a year there's a little hit of guilt, stress, or annoyance.

I have a couple of these UFOs myself, the most annoying to me are a few extra tops from a BERNINA sew-along back in 2021 that I've been moving from place to place ever since. Every time I move them, I think 'ugh, I should finish these.'

A lot of these projects are absolutely worth finishing. Some would bring you joy to complete, or you'd actually wear them, or you'd feel great gifting them to someone but some of these projects just aren’t worth the time or stress. The goal this week isn't to make you feel guilty about what's unfinished, it's to help you identify what's worth your time and energy at this moment versus what you can let go of.

Our Assessment Questions

How do you decide what's worth finishing? Here are the questions I ask myself when I’m looking at an unfinished project:

Can I still imagine myself wearing this?

Depending on how long ago you started a project your style or lifestyle may have changed. The fabric that excited you two years ago might not work for your life now and that's completely okay.

Will it still fit when it’s finished?

It's an unwritten law of the universe that bodies change. If you cut this out three years ago and your body is different now, be honest about whether you're actually going to alter it or if it's just going to sit there longer.

Would I enjoy finishing it enough to gift or donate it when it's done?

The BERNINA samples I mentioned were never meant to fit me, they were for a dress form used in the sew-along. I’d really like to finish them to donate to someone who can use them, so that will bring me enough joy to get the job done. I do this with a lot of our samples and development garments and, for me, that makes them worth finishing — even if it does take me 5 years.

Is this sitting unfinished because life got in the way, or because I've lost interest?

This is an important distinction. Sometimes projects sit because you got sick, had a family crisis, started a new job, or just needed a break from sewing entirely. Life happens to everyone and often when we least expect it.

Other times projects sit because halfway through you realized you don't actually enjoy making structured jackets or your style has shifted. Both of these situations are completely normal, and understanding which one stalled the project can help you decide what to do next with it.

Am I avoiding this because there's a technique I'm nervous about?

If you're hesitant to insert a zipper, make buttonholes, sew a collar, that's different from not wanting to finish the project. Being nervous about a technique is incredibly common and maybe this is the project that finally teaches you that skill! 

The point here is that unfinished projects can tell you things. Sometimes about what you enjoy sewing, sometimes about what was happening in your life, sometimes about techniques that feel overwhelming. There’s no judgement no matter how you answer these questions, just information you can use going forward if it's helpful.

The Sunk Cost Fallacy

I know what you might be thinking, "But I already spent money on the fabric! I already spent time cutting this out!"

This is where we need to talk about the sunk cost fallacy. By definition the sunk cost fallacy is “the phenomenon whereby a person is reluctant to abandon a strategy or course of action because they have invested heavily in it, even when it is clear that abandonment would be more beneficial.” This keeps so many projects sitting in bins for years.

The money is already spent whether the fabric sits in a bin or you let it go. The time you put into it is already spent whether you finish it or not. Keeping something you'll never finish doesn't make those resources less wasted, it just means you keep feeling guilty or annoyed when you see or think about it and that can keep you from spending your time on projects you'd actually enjoy and use.

A Note on Sustainability

Yes, not finishing projects is waste, I'm not going to pretend it's not, but the fabric has already been manufactured, purchased, and the garment has already been cut. We can’t change the past but keeping it in a bin for the rest of your life doesn't make it less wasteful, it just means you feel guilty longer.

What you can do is use this information going forward. If you're finding you have a lot of unfinished projects, depending on the answers to your questions, that may tell you something about your purchasing patterns that you can adjust for the future.

What to Do With Abandoned Projects

If the fabric pieces are large enough to be cut into something else, I often do that. Sometimes I'm able to recut them into a different pattern, use them for muslins, or make bias binding or pocket lining out of them.

Sometimes this isn’t possible, in those cases you have permission to donate the fabric, gift the partially completed project to someone who might finish it, if it's a natural fiber you may be able to compost it, or even throw it away if it's truly unusable. The goal is to stop letting it take up mental and physical space.

Your Action Step This Week

Make a list of unfinished projects. Just what comes to mind, we're not tearing apart your entire sewing space looking for projects from 2015. If you come across more later, you'll know how to assess them then, but for now just list what you can think of.

For each project, run through the questions we discussed above:

• Can I still  imagine myself wearing it?
• Will it fit without extensive alterations?
• Would I enjoy finishing it as a gift or to donate?
• Why is it unfinished — life happened or lost interest?
• Am I nervous about a technique?

Then sort them into two categories: worth finishing versus let it go.

For the "worth finishing" category: Put them in an order that works for you. What would be easiest to finish? What would feel best to complete? What would you actually wear or use most? 

For the "let it go" category: You have permission to do what you need to do. Decide what to do with each one — recut the fabric for something else, donate it, gift it, or toss it if that's truly needed.

Next week we're going to pick one or two things from your "worth finishing" list and actually finish them. That will give us a quick win to build momentum, but this week is just an assessment. 

A Note on Mending

If you have a mending pile, and honestly, who doesn't, we're going to deal with that separately later in the series. For now, you can acknowledge it exists, make a list if you'd like, and move on. Mending is its own (often worthwhile) beast.

Remember…

The goal here is not to feel guilty about what you haven't finished. The goal is to identify what's actually worth your time and energy so you can move forward focused on projects that you enjoy.

Sometimes projects teach you something by not getting finished. That information is valuable in and of itself, so we’re going to take that from this lesson and use it in the future.

Join the Conversation

What unfinished projects have you been moving from place to place? Leave a comment below or on the YouTube video, I'd love to hear what you discover when you do this assessment!

Up Next: Week 4: Quick Win — Finish One Thing

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