Reply #88: There are many skilled seamstresses in the South that lost their jobs

[southerncrone]

at Levi Strauss, Vanity Fair & other clothing mfgs. in the '80's & 90's when they moved their operations overseas to save a nickel. Skilled seamstresses are not the problem.

With the banking meltdown, the problem now is getting the capital to start the business.

I do think we could begin small, perhaps even individuals sewing for others. Trouble is...to compensate someone for their time & skills investment you have to charge a lot of $ compared to what one can purchase an item for at Wal-Mart or Target because of this slave labor. Decent fabric is difficult to acquire & it is all made overseas now, too (w/the small exception of polar fleece material). That is why turning this around will be tough.

I agree w/Crickett....learn to sew. America has lost "SKILLS" along w/jobs. That is our real loss. Had it not been for our skills in WWII, we would not have been able to fight, let alone succeed.

Every year I ask my HS students what skills they have to survive. Most have NONE. They can surf the Web, score a gazillion points on "Space-Invaders-War-Killing-Game-of-the-Week", or microwave a HotPocket, but they have NO skills of survival. We talk about what they would do if we had no more electricity, cell phone, gas, grocery stores could not get food, etc. They never think of these things because they have always been there for them & they ASSUME they always will be. We talk about learning to CREATE things they need & growing food & a sense of self-satisfaction that comes from creating something useful yourself. This is a foreign concept to most of them.
Sad, America.