I'm Feeling Gloomy

I've had a failure. Maybe not 'epic'. But a failure nevertheless. And it's my own fault.

Here it is. Maccall's 6844, PatternReview's best pattern of 2013 no less!

Looks alright from this side doesn't it?

What you can't tell from this picture is that it only has one sleeve and that sleeve is only half sewn in. 

Why? Well...because...

The fabric isn't really stretchy enough for this pattern. It seemed stretchy when I was playing around with it but the more I've sewn the less stretchy it seems. Almost rigid in fact.

But I could and should have checked this before I started.

The fabric is also quite thick, two layers fused together so it is grey on the outside and burgundy on the inside.

Pretty cool, but this has made it very tricky to sew. I preempted any problems with the front band by only using one layer of fabric. 

I should have stopped after I broke needle number two.

I should have stopped when I turned the sleeve inside out and could hardly get my hand though it. 

I did stop when I broke needle number three.

I'm not giving up but I have packed it away because it was making me cry. 

"Don't worry, you'll think of something" said Mr B soothingly. 

Hmmm. I have got enough fabric to cut new sleeves but that still leaves me with the problem of sewing through multiple layers of fabric. And I think the armholes need to be bigger maybe?

And the other issue is that I'm really not sure about the peplum. I've avoided sewing anything with a peplum because my thinking was/is that they are designed to make your waist look small by accentuating your hips. But my hips already do that to my waist naturally and the peplum might be overkill on this front.

What to do?