“I didn’t know you made those kinds of mistakes because I thought you knew what you were doing.”
My sister and I had gotten together on a Sunday afternoon to alter a saree blouse of hers. We had to take apart almost the whole thing to put it back together in a way that fit her better. At one point, I sewed a piece on backwards and she was a bit shocked.
It’s true, I should have known better. Had I taken a closer look at how I had the back hook and eye closure arranged before I started sewing, I would have seen I had it aligned backwards.
The thing is, there is usually a precise order of operations to sewing garments from scratch. I know it like the back of my hand so I don’t have to think about it too much. When altering a garment, though, the order gets thrown off. To avoid unpicking more seams than necessary to alter the garment, you often have to sew things out of their usual order and that makes you have to think way more.
Here’s the thing: your factory sewers know the usual order of garment construction too. If your garment doesn’t follow it, you are making them think way harder. A process that requires more out-of-the-ordinary thinking leads to more potential mistakes.
There’s a benefit to using industry standard methods. They provide maximum quality for minimum effort. Don’t make people think harder than they have to.