Why You Should Appreciate Handmade Gifts

I hope everyone’s weeks are going splendidly. Lately I’ve been thinking about handmade gifts. A lot of people keep saying that this year they will be aiming to give handmade gifts whenever possible, that’s what I tried to do in 2009 but I found that my experience wasn’t particularly positive. I found that people didn’t really appreciate what a handmade gift meant. That’s why I’ve started this three part series. So if you’re sending off handmade gifts, maybe send them these links first so that you’re not dissapointed!

In this series we’ll have a look at WHY you should appreciate handmade gifts, HOW you can appreciate handmade gifts, and also what to do if you don’t really LIKE the handmade gift!!

You should appreciate handmade gifts because…

1) They take time to make.

People spend approximately 1/2 hour choosing and buying a gift for someone at birthdays and Christmas. On average, a handmade gift takes about 2 to 3 hours to choose, buy supplies and make. That’s 5 times longer! I don’t know anyone who has tons of time to spare, so making a gift yourself is a bit of a sacrifice.

2) They thought about what they thought you would like.

In my experience of both giving and receiving, handmade gifts are far more personal. I can buy an iTunes giftcard for anyone, but in making you something I’ve thought about the colours you like, what would look good in your house, and what I know about you as a person!

3) At the end of the day it was probably more expensive then just buying something.

We like to think that making things ourself is cheap and thrifty. It CAN be those things, but a lot of the time, it’s not. You can get mass produced items so cheaply now-a-days that handmade items are really quite expensive. Remember above how I said it could take over 2 hours to make? Well if somone’s time is worth $25 an hour, your gift already costs $50, and that’s without the cost of the supplies, or their expertise!

Even if you take time cost out of consideration, lots of crafters can’t help but add extra embelishments, buttons, and special fabrics to gifts for friends and family. All those little bits add up!

4) It’s personal.

I started to touch on this in point 2, but let me re-iterate it again. This gift is made expecially for YOU. The person who made it was thinking of you wearing/looking/loving/using this particular item when they made it! That’s a pretty special thing in today’s world!

5) It’s the thought the counts.

Everyone shows their love in different ways. Spending time making something special is this person’s way of saying “I LOVE YOU!”. It might not be the way you receive love, but when it comes to relationships, we’ve got to be flexible and appreciate the person for who they are!

Gary Chappman’s 5 Love Languages are a good place to start if you’re interested in such things.

BONUS

6) They didn’t just do it ‘because they had to’.

Have you ever felt that becuase you bought Alice a gift, you really should buy Lucy one too? Well handmade gifts are too precious and time consuming for this to be the case (or at the very least it doesn’t spread very far down the friendship line!). Remember that this gift has been given to you because you truely are a special friend or family member. It’s not just something someone picked up from the impulse isle and thought “This’ll do!”.

Tags: handmade, handmade gifts, series

The spotted dress

My long weekend project is this dress:

This is my first attempt at hard core dress sewing since I use to make my own clothes in high school. Needless to say that it’s quite different to the sewing I’ve been doing since then- mostly just straight simple lines on bags and quilts.

I will say though, all those quilts and bags have served their purpose, as far as sewing skills go- This weekend I’ve been sewing the straightest lines ever!

So, because this being my first piece of clothing sewn in a while, it meant that I wasn’t exactly prepared. It took me two trips to Spotlight yesterday to get together everything I needed (including a new pattern).

I started out wantng to make this coffee date dress, which I could download free from burdastyle, because there a few great tutorials to walk you through it. I even got so far as to sticky tape the whole bloody thing together before I realised there was seriously no way this was going to fit me and that I had NO WHERE NEAR enough fabric. *sigh*

Anyway, I found a new pattern to try, and a similar fabric to buy and started cutting/sewing.

During the day I got a fair bit of Stargate watched with Luke, because I spent a lot of time pinned things together and cutting them out and what not. I got NONE of the other jobs I was meant to do done. Alas. We will do them on Monday as we celebrate the birthday of our beautiful Queen.
BTW when people say we should become a republic they forget about the awesome public holidays and athletic competitions we get to win because we’re in the Commonwealth. I love the monarchy. I even followed them on twitter for a while.

Anyway, back to the task at hand. My dress.

I wanted it to have in-seam pockets in the dress (did I mention I haven’t sewed clothes in FOREVER?! Talk about jumping into the deep end…), but for the life on me can’t find a free pattern online! So I decided to make my own. I’ll post it up here once I’ve perfected it so that other people can use it too.

As I was searching for a pattern, and reading some blogs, I stumbled onto this post by Rossie on pedging to talk more about PROCESSES, and not just finished products when we blog… It’s pretty interesting idea, and one that is inspiring me to write more posts like this!

Tags: dress, handmade, polkadots, process, Sewing, spotted dress