sewing machine vs. hand sewing.

i have this amazing sewing machine. it's baby blue in color, and has this great vintage look to it. it's in perfect condition.

i never use it. ever.

a lot of the things i make for etsy, like catnip toys, are just too small to justify dragging the whole thing out. i also do a lot of hand stitched detail that just can't be done with a machine. and some things can ONLY be hand sewn based on the way i want them to look. but mostly, i just LIKE to hand sew things.

a good friend of mine (also an etsian) told me years ago, before i even started my shop and when his was just starting to really boom, that i needed to get over that asap, because productivity is incredibly hampered by my resistance to the machine. i remember going over to his little apartment, sitting on the floor atop a giant pile of random fabrics that he always had strewn about, and showing him this tiny stuffed owl that was the first plush toy i'd ever made. to prove his point, he quickly cut the fabric to make a similar owl and created it with his sewing machine in probably 10 minutes. i sat on his floor and took an hour to complete another of my own. while both owls were cute, i felt that mine had more personality, but maybe that's because i stared at mine for a good 50 minutes longer than he did.

ok, point taken. so i got the machine out. and it sat there looking at me while i continued to hand sew everything.

cut to well over two years later. i opened up my shop for business approximately august of 2009. things started slowly, as things often do, and while i've never been processing incredible amounts of orders, things picked up so much in november and december that i felt overwhelmed, and decided that maybe i WAS slowing myself down by hand sewing everything, even though i liked the process so much more. however, this realization came right in the middle of the christmas rush and i didn't want to start experimenting at that point, since i had way too much to do. i promised myself once that was over, i'd get out the machine and start incorporating it into my crafting.

so now that time has come. things have quieted down, and i have that self-made promise looming over my head. so i suppose the time has arrived for me to suck it up and use my sewing machine.

i'm dragging my heels though.