Couture sewing...or not?

As I look over some great sewing blogs and beautiful sewing reviews, techniques of couture sewing are often mentioned. The sewing is both impeccable and beautiful, however, I wonder if I'm an anomaly in not being exactly gung-ho about couture sewing techniques.

For example, I have the book, "Easy, Easier, Easiest Tailoring". It's a great, little, handy dandy book that takes a sewer from the traditional, yet time consuming, methods to the easiest and quickest way to achieve "tailored" results. While I greatly admire the traditional techniques and want my garments to have that RTW look, they have to be *fast*.

For example, on the Vogue OOP dress I just made, I was thinking about doing a handpicked zipper with seed beads. That really would have looked beautiful IMO, but then I couldn't find the right color seed beads. And I'm a sucker for a perfectly topstitched centered zipper. So the centered zipper won out. And my perfectly straight stitching lines are admired as much as any handpicked zipper with seed beads would be with a lot less work and fuss. (Okay, maybe not as much if there had been seed beads ;) .)

There is a Vogue retro jacket pattern in my stash right now. The wool and lining was purchased during PR Weekend 2006. I can't wait to make it up, but there are a lot of couture techniques in the instructions used like padstitching and such. Truthfully, I can't be bothered. I'll look at my tailoring book and find the quickest method to achieve the same results.

I guess my feelings on this are mostly because of time. I don't have a lot of time to sew because my kids are always here, there, and everywhere. If I'm going to make something, I need to get it done as quickly as possible or it may never get done. Spending two months on one outfit doesn't excite me. And that's exactly how long it would take with my schedule if I used couture sewing techniques.

Another thing is, is that I have never been that picky on how my garments look on the inside. Areas like the hems, sleeve hems, dress side seams--anything that can be potentially seen from the outside, well, yes I'm concerned about those. But any other area can be finished in the quickest, easiest method possible. I've been known to finish the lower 8-12" of a garment in a professional method, but forget it above that point. No one's going to see it but me. For example, from the slit of a dress down would be finished nicely, but the area above that is my easiest and quickest method of choice.

For me, couture sewing is not a viable option most of the time. But I do think it's interesting how there seems to be a resurgence. For years we've always been looking for something easier and quicker, only to go back to methods of the past. But for me, it's couture...not ;) . Most of the time anyway.