machine vs. hand sewing

I prefer to sew by hand with my appliques. I like the look and the portability. However, I see the problems with hand sewing...its slow, if you don't know what a perfectionist I am you might think the sewing is not as sturdy as with a machine and tying knots by hand is a pain. STILL with all that I like the look of a running stitch, something you can not do with a sewing machine.

Regardless, one way to decrease my base cost for wholesale items is to give sewing the design on a machine a try. I decided to start with a left-over cupcake I had on a reject onesie. I already had a hand sewn cupcake that is being shipped tomorrow to compare with. (please note the cupcake top is misshapen and was a reject item)

So let's start with the cupcake sewn by hand. Probably my fastest item to sew by hand, taking about 45 to 50min.

the stitching on the base of the cupcake is what takes the most time on this design.

Now I went ahead and stitched one on the machine. In the end I had to sew the heart by hand. It was faster and looked better when I did it by hand. I believe that stitching on the machine saved me about 12-15 min on this particular design. I used the loosest straight stitch I could trying to get a similar look to by hand...still you will never get the spacing between the stitches. Sewing machines just don't work that way.
Here is the machine one (remember...reject cupcake top)

even though this one was done with a machine it looks less professional to me...however, that might be my personal bias. If I had never seen my hand stitched ones I would think it looks cute, although lopsided.

and now for the side by side photo:
so I think I could offer the hand stitched one for $9 and the machine one for $7 each.
Next up is the bird experiment.

leave a facebook comment if you have any thoughts on this pricing/sewing dilemma issue.