Making your own clothes: worth the savings?
Saving Pennies or Dollars is a new semi-regular series on The Simple Dollar, inspired by a concerning frugal tactics that might not really save that much money. I鈥檓 going to take some of the scenarios described by the readers there and try to break down the numbers to see if the savings is really worth the time invested.
Joanna writes in: I鈥檝e been sewing skirts and purses instead of buying, and so far the cost isn鈥檛 any cheaper, it鈥檚 actually more expensive than buying on clearance.
This isn鈥檛 an unusual frugal tactic. My wife, Sarah, has made her own clothes in the past. We also have a close friend who makes many of the clothes that her family wears.
Their conclusion? It鈥檚 a hobby that produces clothes at a fairly inexpensive price, but it takes time and you can find clothes elsewhere at an equal or lesser price. If it were simply a question of purely saving money, neither one of them would do it.
The simplest way to compare the prices of such clothes is to look at some of the buying options, as well as some of the options for making them at home.
Recently, I purchased a dress shirt for my five year old son at a consignment shop for $4. Later, we found a similar shirt on sale at another clothing store for $12. So, let鈥檚 use that as a baseline.
My wife visited Jo-Ann Fabrics and purchased a similar type of cloth as to what the shirt was made from for $4.50, which provided her more than enough to make a duplicate of the shirt. She also had to purchase a spool of thread for $1.50, so the cost of material was $6.00.
At home, she used a pattern she found online and made the shirt out of the cloth. This project took her about two hours and required the use of a sewing machine that she鈥檚 had for about ten years. With unskilled hands, such as my own, the project would certainly have taken longer.
So, compared to buying the shirt new at a clothing store, making the shirt was somewhat cheaper. However, buying a nearly-identical shirt at a consignment shop was less expensive than making the shirt.
So why would you bother making your own clothes?
Sarah鈥檚 reasons are simple. It鈥檚 something she enjoys doing. Beyond that, she has the freedom to essentially make anything she can imagine, provided she can find appropriate cloth to begin with. For example, she鈥檚 currently hand-sewing a costume for our son for Halloween, as he wants to go as a fairly obscure character that doesn鈥檛 have costumes available in the usual stores.
Making your own clothes is a hobby that might turn into a business if you鈥檙e skilled, creative, and passionate.
However, it鈥檚 not particularly frugal on its own unless you have some incredibly good sources for cloth and don鈥檛 mind working at a very low hourly wage.
