All you really need is a little plastic thing of needles ($1), some pins ($1), thread (varies but even good cotton thread isn’t that much), scissors (where you might actually consider investing a little - do not use these scissors for anything else, and consider a rotary cutter if you really get into it), and fabric.
Fabric might seem like the pricey part of the equation, but consider how much a thrift store is going to charge you for a duvet or a pile of t-shirts! I have something like 30 t-shirts I spent maybe $5 on several months ago, and I’ve been working through that pile for a while.
You can turn a t-shirt into a pillow, a reusable bag, use the scraps to patch clothing, make dolls, quilts… The bits that get to be so small to be unusable for a scrap quilt you can use to stuff things.
It takes a lot of time compared to machine sewing, but it’s an activity that can be done while watching a tv show.
I hate sewing, but it has saved me thousands of dollars over my lifetime and I am convinced that everyone should know how to do it unless they really don’t care about money.
Don’t forget to pick up a tin of cookies at the dollar store when you get your kit. You get snacks and a place to store your sewing supplies that is needle-poke-proof.
PLEASE BUY THE ODD SIZES FROM THE THRIFT STORES AND NOT THE SIZES I WEAR THANK YOU IN ADVANCE
PLEASE DISREGARD THE PREVIOUS POST, NORMAL SIZED PEOPLE HAVE PLENTY OF CLOTHING OPTIONS. LEAVE THE ODD SIZED CLOTHING FOR ODD SIZED PEOPLE
CAN WE PLEASE STOP YELLING, IT’S STRESSFUL
IT IS IMPORTANT THAT PEOPLE NOT BUY THAT JACKET I WANT TO BUY THEY DO NOT MAKE THEM LIKE THEY USED TO, PROBABLY ON PURPOSE
BIG JACKET CONSPIRACY STRIKES AGAIN
When you have clothes that you want to keep and they get holes in them, just sew up the holes ya dingus! For your health!
I’ve thought about learning to sew by hand for just this reason - to make minor repairs and save some money and create less waste. Does anyone have recommendations for a kit or which items to buy to get started?
Seconding someone’s advice that kits are a bit rubbish. The only things you need are needle and thread. Start with a multi pack of needles, and observe how they’re different. Different needles may differ by: the thickness of the needle; whether the tip is sharp or blunt; how large the eye of the needle is; how long the needle is. Different needles will have different roles, but it’s so easy to get bogged down in complexity, so just get an assortment and discover as you go. Part of learning is building tacit knowledge around what the right tool for the job is, so just give it a try and feel free to try other needles to see how they feel. Personal preference matters…
My main advice on hand sewing needles is to invest in high quality ones, because they’re much nicer to use and last longer. For perspective on what counts as “high quality”, my current ones that are my favourite cost me £4.20 for a pack of 6. That’s expensive compared to a supermarket multi pack, but not excessively so. These ones were particularly fancy, by my standards (Clover Black Gold), but they’re a useful benchmark as being about as fancy as you can really get. John James is another good brand. If these aren’t readily available where you are, don’t sweat it — just use this as a benchmark to see what the rough equivalent is where you are.
A pin cushion is useful for storing needles temporarily, but you don’t need to buy this. You can make one as an early project with some small swatches of fabric and some scrap paper stuffing.
I strongly recommend a thimble for anyone who is going to do significant amounts of hand sewing, because it makes it much easier to build a rhythm and sew neat and fast. It feels clunky at first, but once you practice, it makes things far quicker and easier. Unfortunately, most people’s experience of thimbles is of ill-fitting ones that probably came in some kit. You need one that fits comfortably on your middle finger without falling off or squeezing too right. A simple metal thimble will do, and they’re cheap, but it can be a faff to find the right size. The sizing is sort of standardized, and usually printed/engraved/debossed on the thimble, so you can use that to ballpark if you have some ill-fitting thimbles around. Otherwise, it’s best to go to a craft store and try poking your finger in some thimbles to find one that fits.
I don’t have good recommendations about thread. I got started using generic machine sewing thread, which you’re not meant to do, because it’s worse and harder to use. I find it hard to tell though, because by the time that I got specific hand sewing thread, I had enough skill that I had my own snobbish preferences and specific projects requirements. You don’t need a multipack of thread though, because that’ll be more likely to be crappy. Pick a colour that matches most of the stuff you wear/will be repairing (for me, it’s black). Also get some thread in a contrasting colour, because sometimes that’s useful (such as for temporary lines of stitching). You probably want some cotton thread, and also some polyester thread. In general, repair like with like: so polyester thread for synthetics, and cotton thread for cotton or other naturals. Beeswax can be nice for reducing the friction of the thread, but that’s not super necessary.
I worry that my advice may overcomplicate things, when that’s the opposite of what I want to convey. If there’s any recommendation I could give you, it’s to just get something and start. Hell, if you feel overwhelmed by how granular this is and are at risk of not diving in, then go for a kit if it helps — just don’t spend too much and know that the lesser quality will give you a worse experience. However, the most important thing is to just get started. You can upgrade your stuff or buy specifics as and when you need them, or you feel you’ve outgrown your existing tools.
You will botch repairs and need to redo them. Sometimes you will make it worse than what you started with, but that’s part of learning. However, the sooner that you start to tackle the simpler repairs, the sooner you’ll have the proficiency to be making all sorts of repairs and alterations. I give you this advice as someone who accidentally became proficient in sewing: I dove in and spent a long time being mediocre, and I still feel mediocre at it, but people regard me as being quite skilled. There’s no cheat code, but to take at crack at it.
I need to re-do the patches on my jacket that I applied with fabric glue and want to just sew them on, but IDK how to do the ones that are over the breast pockets because I can’t get my hand fully inside to stitch it up. I don’t want to stitch the pocket itself shut.
Edit: Curved needles. Curved. Needles! 😊 Gonna need to see if I can get one at Micheal’s since my little repair kit doesn’t have one.
Can you post a picture?
Love the patches. The pockets seem rather big, so the problem is not that you aren’t getting anything in, but that you cannot comfortably put the needle from inside to the outside? And I guess it is too thick to go in and out with the same stitch? If this would somewhat work you could consider a thimble, I recently rediscovered that little metal thing and it saved me a couple of times. Gets you through thick layers as long as your needle is stable (or you’re willing to sacrifice 4-5 needles for a project).
Are the patches decorative or functional? If they are decorative (i.e. covering up imperfections) you would only need a couple of stitches to hold them in place, right? Or try another glue? If they are functional (i.e. covering up holes and necessary for integrity) you would need a more profound stitch. In that case, would you consider ripping the seam on the side of the pocket to open it up? That would allow you to have better access. Once you’re done you’d obviously have to sew the pocket back on.
The other alternative is to find a friend with a kid that has small hands and pay them in gummi bears for their labor.
The pocket actually looks bigger on the outside; only about 1/4 of the whole square you see actually is the pocket, so yeah; I can’t comfortably get the needle back out once inside. If I could even use my sewing machine, I would have already done it. But also: I never knew that’s what thimbles were for. Now I’d have to find one that fits my fat thumb lol It would help sew the one on the pocket flap.
I was almost even just contemplating cutting the pocket out, sewing the patch on, then sewing the pocket back in place. But I don’t trust my sewing skills that much.
What you need is a curved needle: it will allow you to sew from the top without ever needing to have access to the underside. They are cheap and widely available. When you use one to sew your patch to the pocket, you can use your hand to keep the pocket expanded, or even better put something small and solid in it to keep the two layers separated while you whipstitch the patch down from the top. Watch a video on how to use curved needles for repair.
Going by name, there are two kinds of curved needles sold: upholstery and embroidery. You absolutely want the embroidery kind: the upholstery needles are huge, made for much larger projects, and would make the fine work you are trying to do very difficult. Also, if it’s there (doesn’t look like it is on your patch) you can pare down any hard coating on the underside of the patches around the edges without disturbing the patch itself, which will make it easier to get a needle through the patch when you go to put it on.
And wax your thread: pull it lightly across a candle to coat it a tiny bit, then pass it between two fingers to soften it into the thread. (There are also commercial products that you do not have, but a candle is fine in a pinch.) This keeps your thread from tangling more than it has to, and lubes it a bit for the sewing. It’s not essential, but it makes everything so much easier that I never hand sew without it.
If you get a thread that closely matches the beige of the patch it won’t matter how sloppy your stitches are, because they won’t be seen. But if you can, wash it and clean the grime off as much as possible before you do this, because it’s hard to match thread to dirty fabric. Also, when you are trying to match thread, sometimes value (light and dark) matters more than color. Because you’re sewing a lighter colored patch, if you can’t find an exact match, choose the closest one but go a shade lighter: the dark will stand out more on a lighter background. (It’s the opposite for darker materials, where you err toward the darker thread instead.)
If you have any problems or questions, feel free to hit me up. I’ve been doing my own hand and machine sewing for decades.
EDITED to add: Here’s a brief video on whipstitching a felt patch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NLr1r5ZMAM - she’s not using a curved needle, but this is the stitch you want.
A video showing how to used a curved needle for repair is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJUuPHDPTyc. He’s using an upholstery needle with pliers, you can see just how big and unwieldy that thing is, but that’s essentially how you use a curved needle to sew from the top only on pretty much any project.
Depending on where you live, those thrift store shirts are not material you really want to use for anything you would touch. “Lightly worn” means very different things in different areas and the more bougie areas tend to get picked clean REAL fast by all the “life hack” kids. And the less bougie areas… there is very much an argument for leaving the thrift shops for those who need them but that ship has sailed.
But yeah. I would just add on that it is well worth it to pay the extra buck or two for some self threading needles and a thimble. If you can’t thread a needle for physical reasons (e.g. vision or dexterity limitations) you probably don’t want to be doing too much sewing for things that experience wear, but not having to thread a needle is borderline life changing. Just stick the needle in something to stabilize it and then pull the thread down into the eye and boom, you are done.
I thought that every pack of needles came with a needle threader, which looks like a diamond shaped metal wire and a little part that you hold. That already is a big help.
A good trick is to thrift “by touch” - feeling for cotton or heavier materials. There are a lot of quality cotton XXL blood drive/college or work event t-shirts that no one will ever want. I’ve volunteered doing some sorting through donations for a homeless shelter before, and they weren’t lacking for those at all. It was more a lack of dress pants for job interviews that were needed.
Resellers are usually going for names and not necessarily quality from what I’ve noticed.
reduces your impact on the environment
This is basically a calling card of shit marketed to dems who purtport to care about climate change but take exactly zero minutes to comprehend it. Spoiler alert: read The Climate Book. Nobody’s individual household actions matter.
