#it can be super half-assed!! do stupid projects at 1 am! embrace hubris!!

[gender-trash]

any advice for people who want to sew/fix their own clothes but can’t afford to spend $150+ on a sewing machine? the only machine i have access to is the one at my university library, which is older than god and jams if you so much as breathe on it wrong

honestly i’m going to recommend you do it by hand — that’s how people made and repaired clothes for nearly all of recorded human history! and for small repairs i find that it’s not all that much slower, especially when you factor in machine setup time etc. i prefer to use a big embroidery needle because my eyes suck and it’s still sharp but easy to thread and use; i also like to use thicker thread or even 2-3 plies pulled off of 6-ply embroidery floss, since most machine thread is thin and can be snapped in your hands and i just don’t trust it :p (specifically what i use for thick thread is a spool of “mercerized” cotton thread i inherited from my grandma’s quilting supplies, and i have *no* idea how old it is or where to get more… but that’s a problem for future me!)

other than a needle and thread, you honestly don’t need all that much other stuff — a metal thimble, maybe, if you’re working with thick fabrics like denim, and fabric scissors if you find that your normal scissors are driving you up the wall. maybe a few pins? i dunno, i can almost never be assed to pin stuff. also “sewing kits” are a scam and always come with the world’s worst thread, just grab a pack of needles and some thread separately and stick em in a pencil case or something if you want a nice little bag.

if you care about colormatching you’ll want at least a spool of white and a spool of black or dark blue. im not going to go into too much detail here, but bernadette banner has some nice tutorial videos on hand sewing technique if you’re not familiar! anyway it *does* feel painfully slow at first but the more you practice the faster you get, and the equipment is definitely cheaper and easier to store than a whole sewing machine. plus if you’re already doing the other repairs by hand it’s easier to do more decorative/embroidery type stuff like satin-stitching over the worn edges of pockets (and even darning holes!) than it is to do that kind of thing by machine.

satin-stitch to reinforce a worn pocket edge at left — all my watch pockets wear like this because i use them to store a small multitool with a keyring dangling out the top of the pocket :/ and at the right, blanket stitch used to kinda-decoratively attach a green patch. i think i literally sewed this patch on while the pajama pants were on my body. (the base fabric is ridiculously worn bc this is my Pajama Pants of Theseus project, in which i will continue to patch and repair these stupid pants until no part of the original fabric remains.)

also from the pajama pants of theseus project — you can kinda just tuck under raw edges and whipstitch over them, when you’re hand-sewing a patch over a hole. (i guess on a machine you would replicate this with a zigzag stitch.)

on the other hand, if you don’t want to hand-sew and have the space for a machine but not the money, i’d recommend stalking craigslist for a while, and potentially going to some estate sales if you have the time — people often get rid of machines for free or cheap when the family member who sews has died and they don’t really know what it’s worth. (i got a serger for free off craigslist a while back!! not even from an estate sale — a sewing studio was shutting down and getting rid of all their stuff.) i guess if you’re not familiar with mechanical stuff like that it might be hard to tell if they’re in good repair or can easily be restored to full function, but as a rule of thumb, if it has a metal casing/all-metal gears you can probably just blow the dust out and clean + oil it (materials needed: compressed air, mineral spirits, sewing machine oil, maybe some grease for the gears) and it’ll be back in business.

let me know if you’d like me to elaborate on any of this stuff, or want any more advice! i can talk about sewing and sewing-adjacent topics ALL day, but this is an Advice Post so i’d like to stay at least *somewhat* on-topic.