Sewing

I sew machine only, picked it up as a "get off of the screen" some winter. I wanted to get into bag making. Picked up an entry range machine, learned the initial technique from a bunch of YouTube videos, some written tutorials that came with free patterns for a bit more specialised stuff. The rest felt similar to getting into electronics, buy ridiculous amounts of fabric and stuff you might want for future projects, stumble through early failures and eventually I ended up with bags good enough to carry out myself or give away.

If you can get somebody experienced to show you the mechanical moves for an hour that's great but I wouldn't call it necessary. With manual sewing it helps to see them in the real world for the weirder stitches but you can mostly get the same from pausing and rewinding a few videos.

If you're willing to spend a bit of money to get started and know what kind of project you want to do you can get kits that contain all the fabric/zippers/... you would need. That takes away a bit of the initial guesswork.

Depending entirely on how good a worker you are, almost anything can be sewn by hand. Designers often start with a picture, so they can calculate the required dimensions from measurements. There is a lot to learn about different cloths, their orientation in a garment and the way the garment "falls". There are often courses in garment design and construction available at technical colleges. These run anything up to 3 years (in New Zealand, my country) and end in a degree level qualification.

This post I made yesterday a seemed like good gateway project for learning to sew. In this case, thoughtfully designed masks much better than what’s available to buy.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23050986