7 Ways To Save Money When You Start Sewing

[Intro music]

Hello, welcome back to my YouTube channel!

I'm starting this video with showing
you this amazing shirt that I thrifted today

Oh my gosh! Juggling. Pochi! MERR.

And this hat that I crocheted -

It's the second thing I've ever successfully crocheted. I've only just started crocheting in the past month

and I LOVE it! It's so much fun. And this hat turned out really really cute and I was made from Fairtrade

wool from Uruguay, so... yayy!
And I'm also sitting in quite a dark room

because I'm still having troubles with migraines and light sensitivity

so if this looks really dark

that's why. If it looks nice and bright then future Annika has done a really good job on post-production.

So hopefully it looks good! Whoo!

So the other day I was browsing through different patterns for clothing that you can buy online

and I was like wow, these are really prohibitively expensive for someone who's maybe

just getting into sewing and doesn't have that much money. I've also been looking at

fabrics recently and thought the same thing...So I wanted to make a little list of all the

tips and tricks that I have learned while being someone who is relatively broke

learning to sew, because fabrics and classes and

books and textbooks and all of that stuff... Sewing accessories, you name it are all quite expensive

it's a pretty expensive hobby to just pick up on a whim,

if you don't even know if you're gonna like it or not.

So this video is gonna be how to get started sewing without spending a fortune.

My first tip is to go to thrift stores to find your fabrics.

You don't want to be buying especially fabrics for your first ever projects from places like ...

Spotlight and Lincraft are the big craft stores in Australia,

I think you've got Joanne's in the US is that one called Michaels - or am I making that up right now?

Anyway fabric from these places is expensive and you're probably also gonna honestly mess it up

because you're learning how to sew and sewing is a little bit hard.

So when I first started sewing I used things like old bed sheets -

you can actually find old bed sheets in quite cute floral patterns.

I got one which was all like cute vintage looking teacups that I made a dress out of

actually that I used to make the first tutorial on this channel.

This orange one here was floral bedsheets!

This pinafore was an old bedsheet... Bedsheets are great,

especially if it's for your first projects and you just mucking around with things. Another thing that

bedsheets can be useful for is for making prototypes,

so before you use the really nice fabric,

if you're using like a light cotton or silk or something like that as your final

fabric, then you can use a bed sheet of the same or at least similar sort of fabric to make your prototype.

Now I know that a lot of you say that you don't have good thrift stores in your country.

And unfortunately that might be the case you might be able to shop online instead - places like Etsy or eBay

often sell secondhand fabrics.

But if you do live in a country that has pretty good thrift stores then you can definitely find good fabrics,

though if you're someone

who thinks they never have good luck thrifting then you're probably looking in the wrong places.

And I'm actually going to link to a video on how to thrift which is very applicable to finding fabrics -

even though the video I made was about clothes. Aside from thrifted bed sheets

you might also hit the jackpot and find a craft section at the thrift store. I found these today:

Two metres of gingham, 3 metres of sweater fleece fabric

2 metres of wool tartan, 2 meters of this nice drapey

chiffon pattern material it's really pretty

4 metres of this really nice drapey tartan for $4! Thrift store prices!

And it's not just fabrics like often there will be a little craft haberdashery section in

different thrift stores like today I also found a handful of zippers

and I probably got all those fabrics and zippers for the price of maybe one or two

metres of fabric in a normal craft store.

Another thing that is great from thrift stores - sewing textbooks, so

this is a woman's day complete book of handicrafts,

a giant, hardcover, like, tome that I got for $3.

I got that today at the thrift store and while it's from the seventies the instructions and

step by step photos

to do all of these different crafts are

really well detailed like I've learnt quite a lot of stuff from it just from reading it today

There's a whole section on metric equivalents. So I don't have to google it I can just use this as a reference.

We've got how to measure every single part of your body for different

clothes a sewing guide for the thread you should use and how many

machine stitches per inch for different types of fabric,

and this whole thing is just on how to iron fabrics like this thing is awesome, and it includes a bunch of

tutorials of how to make things and patterns so like,

yes, this might be a 70s design but a lot of the patterns that they give you are fairly timeless besides seventies

stuff is fashionable anyway! I found this awesome one from the 80s a while ago for 50 cents,

which is also a really good step by step guide

to following patterns and making clothes and this thing I got today as well, which is

from the summer of 87 to 88... You would see people wearing this today!

Like I'm pretty sure seeing that girl on Instagram recently. So don't discredit older sewing guides from thrift shops

just because of their age they are actually often really well-written,

especially if there's something like women's day if you can find women's day books,

I have two of them - they're really well written. Another good place to get cheap fabrics and craft supplies is

places, like estate sales and garage sales... Estate sales,

you might be able to score with fabrics because often it might be an older person who has passed away who has

hoarded fabric their whole lives. That is definitely going to be me in the future

I pity the person who has to go through my fabric stash -

or if you know people who have relatives maybe like their grandma

recently moved to a nursing home and left all her fabric stash

they might be like, please please take this off us! I have had three different people

give me huge like roomfuls of fabric that they didn't need anymore because

they knew I liked so that brings me to another tip

let everyone in your life know that you like sewing! Make it be known that you are now the sewing person

because not only will you find these people who might have stashes that they want to unload.

They might just be like, oh, I'll buy this person a present. I'll buy them a sewing machine for Christmas.

That's what happened to me.

I showed an interest in sewing and for Christmas that year my dad

noticed that there were sewing machines on sale at the post office and he was like awesome

I'm gonna get that for Annika and the rest is history.

Talking about sewing machines - if you're going to be spending any money

this is where you need to spend it.

You don't wanna be spending your money on fabrics, on patterns, on classes, on books...

You want to be spending it here.

Because if you have a bad sewing machine, if you go for like the

cheapest worst type, your projects probably won't work out and

you're probably gonna think that it's your fault that you're a bad sewer when it's

actually the sewing machines fault. It can totally put you off sewing for the rest of your life.

Not a good idea, and the benefits to investing in a good sewing machine is that you will have it for years

so you can save money in the long run because you're able to make all your own clothes. If you

improve a lot and really take to it, you can even make money selling things.

So I just really think this is the one thing you really should invest

in if you're getting started sewing.

That said, there are some really decent sewing machines out there for beginners that are only around

$100 - $200. I can only speak from personal

experience, but I really like my Bernina machine it is a beginners, but semi computerized machine

which meant that it has let me do a lot more intermediate stuff not just beginners only stuff

like I can work with swimsuits really easily or I can work with denim and I've had it for -

I think it's four years at this point - and

it's I've never even had it serviced and it just works perfectly like the day I got it.

Of course I'm also going to mention free sewing tutorials on the internet!

So if you're just learning to so I actually compiled a whole page

of free beginner sewing tutorials on my website.

And of course all of my tutorials are free and I have

a whole beginner's playlist that you can go through which is ranked in

order from easy to hard. They're all free. Please use them!

My last tip is that there are plenty of places to get free sewing patterns

and I'm going to be linking some of my favorites down below.

Colette does a couple of free patterns, Peppermint magazine has a lot of free patterns,

Tilly and the buttons has some free tutorials,

these are all quite beginner friendly and

ones like Tilly and the buttons and Colette

actually teach you how to sew while you use them if you do spend any of any money on them

it's kind of like a class and a pattern all in one.

So it's quite a lot of value for money, but I'll put the links to these

and some are in the description box down below,

so that you can find some good quality beginners patterns that are free.

Also make some sewing friends!

Anyone who is friends with me and shows even the slightest interest in sewing

I like load them up with a bunch of fabrics to take home.

Is the answer to this one...become friends with Annika?

No, but I think you'll find that the sewing community is really passionate,

eager to help and teach others to learn so making friends who love sewing and

letting the world know that you love sewing is definitely

not a bad idea! Speaking of making sewing friends

It's been like a week since I launched the make thrift try

community challenge and there have already been so many photos on

Instagram who have taken part in the challenge,

or they've gotten started on the challenge or what they're like posting works in progress,

and it's been so cool to see. Um, thank you so much for posting them

I am so excited to see more throughout the month. Remember it finishes

at...

31 days after?

My last video was posted

So if you want to join in get started with some sewing - it doesn't have to be super professional!

If you're a beginner you are more than welcome!

Then please join in!

If you have any more tips or tricks on how to get started sewing without spending a ton of money

on places where you might be able to find cheap craft accessories

or if you have any favorite free pattern websites that aren't linked in the description box below!

Please leave a comment! When I witness like a nice friendly interaction in my comment section,

I get so happy and I'm like.. FRIENNNDDDSSSS!

It honestly makes my day. So please do that. I hope you've enjoyed my little

skater beanie, Emo hair in this video. I think it's very cute. I love this beanie. Anyway, thank you for watching

I hope this video was helpful, and I'll see you all next time. Bye!