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One of the inventors of the sewing machine didn’t patent it because of the human cost.  Always I think of Emma Goldman with her sewing machine, or Emma Goldman her first night in jail “at least bring me some sewing.”  Wikipedia says the sewing machine reduced average garment construction time from 14 hours to two hours.  Somewhere on a sewing blog someone said “use every part of the garment” and “each garment holds in it hours of a garment worker’s life.” Whenever I sew I feel that connection to the garment worker who is also right now sewing just as when I used to write poetry each time I wrote felt also that thing -- culture -- tendrilling out in me, but I would argue it is more meaningful to sew a dress than to write a poem.  I am not to be heard shouting out in frustration, however, when writing.  It’s just not as hard. So I make anywhere from 10 to 15 dollars an hour at any of my three jobs.  A garment from Target or 4ever 21 costs 10 to 30 dollars.  A garment from a thrift store costs somewhere between four and 10 dollars.  A garment at a garage sale costs one  to five dollars.  A garment from a department store costs 30 to 500 dollars.  All of these have been made, for the most part, from hours of women’s lives.  Now I give my hours up to the garments.  My costs are ridiculously low:  $2 fabric (sometimes sheets and blankets) from Goodwill, patterns bought for 99 cents or less, notions found at estate sales for almost nothing, one or three dollars.  I almost save money like this. The fabric still also contains the hours of the lives of farmers and shepherds and chemists and factory workers and truckers and salespeople and the first buyers.  Sewing is difficult.  There is a reason girls were trained in it from toddler-hood onward, years and years spent at practice, and still -- even then -- might not have been good.  Sometimes when you look at smoothly joining two different sized pieces of curving material you think that there is no way ever this could happen, yet sometimes it does.