Access
What sewing training has taught us about potential, technology, and craftsmanship.
We recently spent seven days intensively training a group of young women who had never worked with a sewing machine before.
Watching someone touch a sewing machine for the first time is always interesting.
Instead of making it too serious, we tried to make it less stressful — with lots of giggling along the way.
And the troubleshooting sessions?
Hilarious. 😊
The first few hours can be full of little things that experienced sewers don't even think about anymore.
How to sit.
How to control the pedal.
How to guide the fabric.
How much pressure to use.
How to listen to the sound of the machine.
How to stop.
How to start again.
And then, slowly, something changes.
The machine that looked intimidating starts to become a tool.
I think this is one of HOD's specialties.
Not simply teaching someone how to sew, but walking alongside someone who is starting from zero and seeing how far they can go.
After seven days of training, my first reflection is quite simple:
It’s a shared journey.
And what I learned even more this time is about access.
Indonesia has so much potential
There are so many people in Indonesia with incredible potential.
We are surrounded by generations of people who know how to make things with their hands. Skills, techniques, materials and traditions have been passed down through families and communities.
Our craft heritage is incredibly rich.
The original crafts of the archipelago, together with influences brought by people who travelled here, settled here and traded here, have all mixed and evolved over generations.
You can see it in the techniques.
The colours.
The fibres.
The materials.
The patterns.
And eventually, the technology.
Which brings me to the sewing machine.
Okay, a little history.
I'm not a historian. 😄
I'm just someone who has been using sewing machines a lot since I was about five.
The sewing machine didn't really have one single inventor. It developed through a series of inventions and improvements. One early British patent related to a sewing needle mechanism was granted to Frederick Wiesenthal in 1755.
But why did people want to invent a sewing machine in the first place?
For one very practical reason:
Hand sewing was slow.
As the need for garments and textiles grew, there was a need to make things faster, more consistently, and with less physical labour.
The sewing machine was technology created to reduce the time and labour needed to make things.
To make production easier.
To save time.
And perhaps to give people more time and capacity to do other things.
But here is the interesting part.
The machine itself doesn't determine what can be created.
The person operating it does.
The machine doesn't replace craftsmanship
This is something I think about a lot when we teach sewing.
A sewing machine does not replace craftsmanship entirely.
It changes where the craftsmanship happens.
Instead of making every stitch by hand, the skill moves into learning how to control, understand, and master the machine.
How to understand fabric.
How to read tension.
How to choose the right needle.
How to control speed.
How to solve problems when something goes wrong.
How to translate an idea into something the machine can help you create.
And eventually:
How to design.
How to develop.
How to make something better.
Technology can make the process faster.
But skill is still human.
So why do we start with the basics?
This is why, whenever we train our own team at HOD or work with communities that want to develop sewing skills, we take the basics seriously.
Very seriously.
Because the basics tell us so much.
The more people we train, the more we learn ourselves.
We learn where people struggle.
We learn which instructions make sense and which don't.
We learn which movements need more practice.
We learn how differently people learn.
We learn where confidence drops.
We learn when someone is ready to move forward and when they need more time.
And that is how our training continues to develop.
It is not simply a curriculum that we wrote once and repeat forever.
It comes from years of training our own staff and artisans — observing, adjusting, trying again, and walking alongside people through the learning curve.
The training changes because the people are different.
That is part of the work.
And yes, training costs money
There is something else I think is important to say.
Training communities at HOD is costly.
Yes. Of course it is.
HOD has sometimes been described as a “social enterprise”, but our operations and cash flow come 100% from our own sales and, occasionally, from training.
We don't have a separate business sitting behind HOD paying for the social impact.
The business has to carry itself.
We have to pay people fairly.
We have to maintain machines.
We have to buy materials.
We have to pay for workspace, electricity, transportation, administration and all the other invisible things that keep a small business running.
So for us, the “social” part is not that the business doesn't need to make money.
The social part is where the business creates impact.
This distinction matters.
Because if we want meaningful work to continue, the business itself needs to be healthy enough to sustain it.
From worker to artisan
At HOD, we are building a pathway that starts from the worker level and develops towards the artisan level.
Someone may come with very little technical skill.
They need time to learn.
They need access to a machine.
They need someone to teach them.
They need a safe space to make mistakes.
They need repetition.
They need meaningful work.
And they need someone willing to walk alongside them.
That is why our approach is not simply:
“Here is a sewing machine. Now learn how to use it.”
It is more like:
Worker → Skilled Worker → Artisan.
The journey takes time.
It takes patience.
And honestly, it takes quite a lot of repetition. 😄
But then something happened that made me smile.
They started with zero experience on a sewing machine, and within one week, they were already jumping into free-motion embroidery — moving the fabric freely under the needle and drawing with thread.
Free motion in one week?!
Okay, that was quite something. 😄
Of course, they are still beginners. There is a long way to go. But this is exactly why access matters.
Seven days is not enough to make someone an artisan.
But seven days can be enough to open a door.
And sometimes, that's where everything starts.
What is missing isn't always potential
This is probably the biggest thing I keep taking away from our training experiences.
There is so much potential in Indonesia.
Sometimes what is missing isn't the potential.
It is access.
Access to a machine.
Access to knowledge.
Access to practice.
Access to someone who knows how to teach.
Access to opportunities.
And sometimes, simply access to someone who believes:
You can learn this.
That is what we see again and again.
Not people who “can't sew”.
But people who have not yet had access to sewing.
There is a big difference.
And perhaps that is what craftsmanship development is really about.
Not just making better products.
But opening access to tools, knowledge and meaningful work — and then walking alongside people long enough for their own potential to emerge.
Seven days cannot finish the journey.
But it can begin one.
It’s a shared journey.
