idk if this is a common misconception, but before I started to learn how to sew I was under the impression that the actual sewing was the main time-consuming part of the process? but that idea died pretty quickly once I actually started. in reality, making a garment from start to finish is like, 20% sewing At Most and actually mainly about cutting, pinning, and ironing. If trying to self-draft patterns, that's another thing on top of everything else; even if using a ready-made pattern, many people end up having to make adjustments so that the pattern better fits their proportions and their desires.

I'm under no impression that my clothes look "professional", there's still am amateurish quality about them because despite having been at this for about two years, I haven't actually made many full projects during that time (for various reasons — mostly I've been preoccupied by other stuff, and I also do a lot of modifying clothing which is very different from making clothing from scratch.) I do think that I'll get a lot better at garment construction the more I do it, but something I think is fun is that with a little bit of "idc what people think" energy even the messy, amateurish results of beginning sewing can be worn out and look cute! I've mentioned this before, but I made a pair of strappy plaid pants and I messed them up a lot, including in some fairly visible ways; but nobody noticed the messy parts, they just saw cool pants and I got a shit ton of compliments on them. I dress for myself and myself alone, so I really don't care that much what other people think of my clothes, which helps me go out in my imperfect pieces with basically zero self-consciousness.

That being said garment construction is an incredible skill, and it boils my blood when people imply that ready-to-wear clothes are put together poorly or without skill or whatever. I do not possess the skills of a seamstress of ready-to-wear clothes, and the vast majority of people doing this kind of complaining don't either. When I see people being snobby and elitist about cheap clothing, implying it all falls apart quickly, I actually want to shake them because like — the problem with cheap clothing is not that the clothes are poorly put together, it's the labor exploitation of the incredibly skilled garment workers, many of whom are located in the global south.