Spaceship vs Bicycle

I have a fantastic sewing machine. It was a gift from my mother-in-law, who has created impeccably crafted bags and quilts and appliqués on it. She knows I like to sew, too, and when she upgraded she gave it to me as a gift. 

It’s deluxe. I won’t go into the specifics but it’s pretty much a computer with a needle. It has a stylus for the touchscreen. Along with I don’t-know-how-many stitches and an entire arm you can attach for embroidery and quilting. 

A Bernina 880 Plus sewing machine and manual, which has the technology of a spaceship but doesn't make me better at sewing.

It’s like a spaceship.

My old sewing machine is bare bones. It has 16 stitches (that’s not a lot, by sewing machine standards) and maybe two attachments. It has dials. It’s more like… I don’t know… a bicycle. 

The thing is, I’m a passable sewist on both. I have skills. I know how to put a garment together. But regardless of whether I’m using the spaceship or the bicycle, I still make the same mistakes. My most-used tool is probably a seam-ripper, the little cutter that helps me take stitches out. I do that a lot, along with cursing under my breath. 

I’m still slow. Because I have some skills, but I’m not a person who can “whip up” a dress for an event that night, even if it’s two rectangles with a hem. I will find a way to sew them together backwards, or the needle will jump while I’m topstitching, or something will pucker where it shouldn’t. 

The spaceship doesn’t fix those things for me. 

The whole experience is not unlike writing, to be honest. We talk a lot about improving productivity through software and finding ways to do it faster, but generally, the thing that sets a piece apart is the thought behind it. And sometimes that front end, the planning you put in while you’re reading a book or talking to a colleague or walking the dog, is the stuff that truly super-charges the execution. 

I think about this often when I hear people talk about how to churn out content more quickly. And okay, yes, I think about it in the context of LLMs, which everyone seems pretty excited about right now. Because the question for me is not 'how much can you produce?' but 'how can you create the best, most useful content?' And that takes thought and planning and skill.

And of course not everyone has the same skill sets, but like I said above, that spaceship sewing machine doesn't make me a better sewist. Practice and learning does that. Rushing and ignoring best practices is how I have a top that's three sizes too big or a skirt with an uneven hem. It's also how I learned that fabric choice and taking the time to fit to your body are important.

Sometimes slowing down for a minute and doing the work "the old-fashioned way" is okay. It might not feel like it is, but the end result is often miles better — more targeted, more effective, and more human.

It’s also the stuff that makes being a human worthwhile, even if we end up cursing under our breath.