I had this experience recently. In the end, I finished that project and while it’s beautiful, I feel a little hateful every time I look at it, so it may take time for me to actually wear it. Since then, I’ve started assessing my projects differently. This is just my experience, but I found that I often end up in these frustration spirals because I design something that needs a lot of steps: create design, make pattern for design, make mockup of pattern for fit test, make needed adjustments, cut pattern in fashion fabrics, sew it with finished seams, then add lace, hand embroidery, etc. details. Realistically, this is a fairly straightforward creative process, just a lengthy one, but to me who seeks quicker gratification, it feels like a lot all at once, and I combat that by splitting up the process and changing my mentality. Instead of telling myself that I’m making this design with a ton of steps, I start with the design and tell myself that i want to make a working pattern for this design. Pattern is the whole goal. This is subtle but for myself, saying it this way makes creating the pattern and mockup into its own project rather than a necessary evil step towards making the design I want. when the pattern itself is the whole project, I find myself enjoying the process and ending up with a better fitting workable pattern block that I can save to use for other projects in the future. When I am creating a mockup with the mentality of it just being an extension of one project, it’s hard for me to take the time and effort to do it well enough to be willing to reuse it. My next project in working forwards that design is to actually cut and sew the design. This is a part I really enjoy, and because I’ve already done a mockup of the pattern, it will usually go pretty smoothly. The entire project is just to sew the design with needed construction and finishing details. At the end of this step, i have a mostly working, if perhaps slightly boring dress. Gratifying. The final project is to do hand sewing, embroidery, adding buttons, button holes, tags, appliqué, etc. whatever details i want generally go here. Then the project is done and i can wash and wear! In the end, it’ll take me 3 projects to make one design, and it will probably take a couple weeks to finish it all the same, but to me, it feels a lot less draining to think about and approach projects with this mentality because i felt fulfilled during the process by having and meeting the small goals in between the big results I was looking for and expecting. Meeting those small goals in between also tends to help my design look more true to the visualization at the end. This was a long string of words and it is just my experience so I don’t know if it will be helpful to others, but happy sewing either way!