I freely admit, I am getting the heebyjeebies about spending extravagantly on sewing. I have spent $300+ on it in the past month (holiday sewing spree!) Don't get me wrong, I am sure I will eventually use the vast majority of my purchases this year. After all, in addition to sewing up some of the new fabric these holidays I am also sewing up some fabrics that have been in my stash over 5 yrs.
But it set me to thinking - mum taught herself to sew when she was at Uni, as a cost-saving measure. She sewed a lot of us kids' clothes when we were young, and most of her own ever since, for much the same reason (Though now I honestly think it is more force of habit, helped along by not much availability of flattering plus-sized clothes that are suitable for this climate, that has her sew these days.) I have always had such a large component of clothes sewn by me, or op-shop clothes in my wardrobe, I barely know what it would cost to dress myself if I relied mostly on RTW clothes like so many people do.
Out of curiousity (er, well, ok, as a hopeful sop to my heebyjeebied money conscience!) I have tried to do a cost comparison. I have two stumbling points. One, how do you compute the cost of a pattern? Do you count it the first time you use it, then never again? Do you divide it by how many times you have used it? (What about when you use the sleeves of one pattern or the neckline of another used as a pattern adjustment to another pattern?)
And second, I simply don't really know how much I would spend if I was buying mainly RTW. Would I buy at K-Mart and Big W? Or Portmans and Witchery? Or a bit of both? And how much would it add up to anyway?
As I go on from here I am going to do my best to add up the cost of my garmets, and see if I can do some sort of comparison.
The saving is enormous, particularly when you consider that the garment you make yourself is also made to fit your figure, and so will look better on you than a readymade. If you use the pattern more than once you could compute 50% of the purchase price, plus fabric, thread, trim, etc. Apart from that you put something of yourself into the garment when you are sewing it, and you will still be wearing it (usually) long after a readymade has been consigned to the op shop.
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