Is using a machine to make something, still "handmade"?

[OpenWheelRace]

I have a small online business that sells leather goods.
At the moment, the majority of my leather items are sewn by hand but I'm in the market for an industrial sewing machine that will not only speed up the process, but also up the quality and allow me to expand the product range.

I've just seen someone state on a leather forum that using a machine is "cheating" and that a product (not just leather, all products) can only be considered hand-made, if it is made completely with ones two hands - no machines at all.

I'm presuming this means hand-tools (hammer, knife, scissors etc) are all acceptable, but bigger machines such as sewing machines, clicker presses, guillotines etc - are not considered handmade.

AIBU to think that my items are still "handmade" even if I used a sewing machine? If I were making a dress, I'd consider it handmade despite the use of a machine. My process is still at home, heavily labour intensive and not automated in anyway - it's not a factory run where thousands are produced in a day.

I’d class that as handmade.

That's why some places start using phrases like 'hand-tooled' and 'hand-crafted' or 'made at home with artisanal techniques' to try and get round it.

I probably wouldn't call a dress I'd sewn on a machine 'hand made' personally. I'd call it 'home made' I think. But something that I'd stitched entirely by hand, I'd call 'hand-sewn'.

I think so. After all a homemade dress would be most unlikely to be stitched by hand but would still be a totally different concept to a Primark dress shipped in from Bangladesh or wherever.

Hand made but not hand sewn

I'd class that as handmade. I don't know what the dictionary or legal definition is though, my guess is there isn't a widely used specific definition which is why everyone interprets it differently. I'd still class a cake as hand made even if it was in a kenwood, I wouldn't expect hand made cakes to be mixed with a non electric hand whisk to be classed as hand made

I'd class that as handmade.

I would also class it as handmade

Yes I would still class that as handmade. I have no experience in the world of crafts but my guess would be that leather forum person is being overly literal. If you wanted to avoid the problem you could use another term (eg artisanal) but as a lay person I wouldn’t expect something advertised as hand made to be entirely hand sewn.

Yes, still handmade

Home made. Not hand made. I do a lot of dressmaking and apart from the fact that I do it for fun, fit and fabric rather than earning a (sadly very poor) living, the difference between me and someone in a factory is that my machine and I are much slower.

I'd say the leather goods were not hand-made if you use an industrial sewing machine. I'd probably say hand-crafted.

"a product (not just leather, all products) can only be considered hand-made, if it is made completely with ones two hands - no machines at all."

This is unachievable. The raw materials (leather, cotton) were processed using machinery. Machines were used to make the tools, power the lighting etc.

Are they made by your hands, OP, rather than bought in from a factory? If you use tools to batch make rather than them being mass-produced then I would class that as hand-made. As a PP has said, machines may have been used at stages of the supply chain but I think the essence is your hand-crafting them.

Hope business is good for you.

Id say homemade.

It is hand made. One person made it. It may or may not be or good quality

Home made is usually of lesser quality, home made cake versus a hand made cake.

Using a machine for part of the manufacture does not stop something being hand made: sewing machine, electric whisk, wood lathe... All are controlled by a pair of hands.

Hand crafted is the Etsy style description of a quality item.

As opposed to the Facebook version!

I'd still consider it handmade.

I agree home made rather than hand made

It's handmade. As in someone didn't press a button on a machine in a factory to churn out 00s at a time with no manual input.

You do the work but the machine is one of your tools that you use.

I'd need to check, OP, but I think applying that definition to jewellery would mean there would be no decent handmade jewellery, perhaps only wirework and beads.

I’m wondering the same with the advent of cricut machines and card making.

For leather work, using a machine to sew is still hand made, but its 'hand-sewn' that is the key phrase with leatherwork anyway and obviously you can't sell machine sewn leather as handsewn.

It really depends on what it is you are making as to whether this matters.

Handbags.. not so much.

Dog collars, bridles, leads, yes, it matters because for these, hand sewn using double-needle sewing is always going to be stronger than machine sewing.

A woman I share a craft table with can answer you about cricut etc.

She cuts by hand. Draws her template, photocopy's it for layers and cuts with a scalpel. She hates the out of a box cards etc.

Yet she has one. She uses it to make bits that other crafters buy. Like me - I bought a few snowflakes and Christmas bits to hand make some stockings for my clients. She sells a lot to home makers on eBay.

My craft stuff is hand made, most of it made with a sewing machine, e.g. thread pictures made using dropped feed dogs.

I also do darning repairs.

It is all hand made. Some includes, or is completely, hand sewn.

I don't know if there's a legal definition that you'd need to check if you're selling, it is a bit tricky. I say that I've made garments myself, I'm not sure that I'd be happy describing them as handmade. I'll usually have used a sewing machine for part, hand stitched part, and possibly have some machine embroidery. The machine embroidery definitely tips it out of the handmade category for me.

I own a few homemade leather things as I have two friends into historical renactment stuff and I support a religious community who sell leather goods to make their way. The former definitely don't use any machines, they're trying to do it as near as possible to the original production. The latter may well use machines, and as there's a few nuns who do it together I'd probably describe it as artisinal rather than homemade.

I wouldn't get worked up about it either way though. If I bought something described as homemade and it turned out to have been partly machine done it wouldn't bother me at all. As long as there's no trading standards issues then it seems like it's just a matter of opinion.

I can see that there is a grey area around when handmade becomes mass produced, but I think you are justified in saying handmade.

Incidentally scissors and needles etc are also machines (simple machines, to be precise. I know this from one of my 7 year old's books. Hah! )