I ask your indulgence in asking this question, since it is long.
I have many reasons to sew personal garments like men?s dress and sport shirts.
Some are: copying a favorite design not available any longer, accommodating posture or fitting problems to achieve perfect fit, using special or high-quality fabrics like Armani, Zegna, Bill Blass, etc in the style I want and without the high price, using sturdy/pleasing construction techniques like different seams instead of serger construction or glue, using comfortable interafacings and linings (I like corduroy collarstands and sometimes collars or cuffs on casual shirts, for eg.), pocket size and location or absence of, and many other reasons besides the pure satisfaction of making a shirt I cut from whole cloth.
We usually get better at sewing with experience; I have at least. But some of my stuff looks ?homemade?, and many things I see others create have the same look about them, either in person or on some of the webpages I see people refer to here.
I?m not talking about weird designs as shirts I make are pretty standard, but the devil is in the details. Things like a pocket a little tiny bit askew, uneven topstitching, miniscule puckering of a seam maybe from a finicky fabric, failure to hang right, and a lot of other things alone or in combination and scream out: "I?M HOMEMADE" . I wear a new creation and someone asks: ?Did you make that?? ?Why do you ask?? ?Oh, I don?t know; just wondering? Busted again. But they all like the materials; they?re special.
The problem I have is that machine-made off the rack shirts, however poor the stitching or cheap the fabric, or how soon the buttons need to be resewn. don?t suffer from these faults.
I?m not looking for the usual platitudes like: ?Don?t worry, it will all come in time, with experience, just have patience?. I?ve seen lifetime sewists showing at state fairs create garments with the same look, and stuff in sewing books as well. So the issue is not how to achieve perfection, but how to accept results that are less "professional" than even cheap stuff off the rack, although better constructed and of better material.
Assuming you?ve all created less than perfect garments tainted with homemadeitis, my question is just this:
How do you come to accept the reality of creating imperfect garments, yet retain the satisfaction of creating things in this wonderful hobby, business, or whatever? How do you get over this hurdle?
So far remembering just one thing has helped a little: I took a beginning art course as a returning GI in the mid-50?s on my way to gaining an engineering degree. Noting I was unusual student in her freshman class of Liberal Arts students by my goals and age, the instructor said, ?This semester I?m going to teach YOU that a pearl is prettier than a ball-bearing?. So I?m trying to embrace imperfections in my creations as being positive, but it?s a struggle.
Any thoughts on coping skills you may have are welcome.
JPBill