On a related note, I wish DIY fashion/clothing was something more accessible. I realize it’s always going to take a certain amount of skill to do, but I still wonder if there are ways we could make it easier for people with no experience with that sort of thing.
My wife is a skilled knitter and it's wild how much work goes into a sweater.
She'll have friends who are like "omg you should open an Etsy shop" and she hates it because if she paid herself minimum wage for just the hours, ignoring the material, it would still cost over $200 for a sweater. Using natural fibers pushes that over $500 at least.
The thing is many of the common clothes we wear have advanced sews that could never be done with a home machine. Things like flatlocks or dual chainstitch sews require expensive industrial equipment. The home alternative sews just look bad, and perform worse. There's a reason clothes made from a basic lockstitch home sewing machine are usually dresses, button up shirts, suits, etc. Things like athletic wear are full of those advanced sews I was talking about, with difficult to work with material too.
The near-slaves who make our clothes in Asia are actually all very skilled at what they do in their sewing jobs. There's this idea that factory workers all do easy monotonous jobs, not so. The sewers who make our clothes are all incredibly skilled at doing their one particular sewing operation, and when combined they all make the near perfect item. Doing something similar at home is incredibly hard, which is why home made clothes are usually so much more simple than athletic wear or even normal casual wear that you'd buy in a store.
On a related note, I wish DIY fashion/clothing was something more accessible. I realize it’s always going to take a certain amount of skill to do, but I still wonder if there are ways we could make it easier for people with no experience with that sort of thing.
My wife is a skilled knitter and it's wild how much work goes into a sweater.
She'll have friends who are like "omg you should open an Etsy shop" and she hates it because if she paid herself minimum wage for just the hours, ignoring the material, it would still cost over $200 for a sweater. Using natural fibers pushes that over $500 at least.
Yea, and then people on Etsy would be like, 500$ for a sweater OMG! I can get one at warlmort for 30$ (or whatever they cost)
The thing is many of the common clothes we wear have advanced sews that could never be done with a home machine. Things like flatlocks or dual chainstitch sews require expensive industrial equipment. The home alternative sews just look bad, and perform worse. There's a reason clothes made from a basic lockstitch home sewing machine are usually dresses, button up shirts, suits, etc. Things like athletic wear are full of those advanced sews I was talking about, with difficult to work with material too.
The near-slaves who make our clothes in Asia are actually all very skilled at what they do in their sewing jobs. There's this idea that factory workers all do easy monotonous jobs, not so. The sewers who make our clothes are all incredibly skilled at doing their one particular sewing operation, and when combined they all make the near perfect item. Doing something similar at home is incredibly hard, which is why home made clothes are usually so much more simple than athletic wear or even normal casual wear that you'd buy in a store.
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