Gracefully Giving Up

I sew because I love doing it.  Since my baby girl was born, I haven't really been able to make much of anything.   Last week I had a few minutes one afternoon with just Kid 1 (the other two were magically napping at the same time), and I was feeling the itch to sew.  I even had the perfect project to work on.  One of my good friends  is having a baby girl very soon (Hi Becca), and I had a great idea of something special I could make her.

She had recently passed on an old dress shirt for Kid 2 to wear that her two year old grew out of.  I thought it would be adorable and sentimental if I refashioned the shirt into a little dress/top for their baby girl to wear.

I started working on it and I was feeling good.  I cut out the stain, and I had a pretty good plan for how everything was going to work.

But then something happened and I messed it all up.  I cut too much out of the width and I was pretty sure I didn't have a wide enough piece to make it work.

I played with it and stared at it for a while and tried really hard to figure out how I could rescue the dress.  After a bit I realized that I was too tired to think clearly, and it would be wise to give up now.  You know, before I wasted anymore time on something destined to fail.  Maybe I could have saved it, and I saved the bigger pieces for a secondary idea that I may or may not get around to, but I think sometimes it's wise to just give up and call it a day.

And that is just what I did.  I'm telling myself that I gave up gracefully and that I made the right move.  I'm curious, what is the point when you give up on you projects, or do you just soldier through until it works out?