What are your thoughts on homemade clothes?

Being able to read a pattern and sew is a great skill , and I'm in awe of anyone who is able . Lucky you .

Congratulations! It’s so good to wear your own clothes!

Just beware of shit AI generated patterns (especially on the likes of Etsy).

I have a colleague (well she's retired now) who is the most incredibly skilled seamstress - to the point she would come in wearing an immaculately tailored blazer with colour contrast piping and pockets and lining and everything and then chirpily comment that "oh it was a pair of curtains from the charity shop"

@ClothingDilemma that's fantastic. Are you happily share a picture of your work?

Re cost, I’ve just made a jacket to wear for my son’s wedding. Im not a very experienced sewer and not very confident.

the pattern was a free basic online pattern, just front, back and sleeves.

i made it up first in duvet fabric from a charity shop and used that to adjust the free pattern to fit perfectly - it’s amazing how much fabric you can acquire, often brand new, by looking in the bedding section of charity shops. I have a stash of pure cotton duvet covers and sheets with metres and metres of nice fabric for £1-£3 each, ideal for making toiles.

Once I knew it fitted i made it up a second time properly, again from my charity shop duvet stash, adding a lining and trying out some alterations to the sleeves and collar until I was happy with it. This gave me a perfectly useful casual jacket as well as confidence to start cutting my ‘expensive’ fabric.

and once it was adjusted perfectly, I finally made it in my proper Japanese fabric, knowing it was going to fit and look just like it was supposed to,

The first try took an hour or so to put together, the second maybe three hours as I fine tuned the fit, and the final jacket another three hours.

so the only real cost was a couple of meters of nice fabric, everything else was from a stash acquired very cheaply.

And I can now reproduce this jacket as often as I want knowing it’s tailored exactly to my size. No ‘one shops 12 is another shops 16’, or ‘fits at the waist, gapes at the neck’ issues to deal with.

An adjustable dummy altered (and padded!) to fit my size exactly was invaluable though, so I could work on it without constant putting on and taking off.

You partner is an idiot. If someone knows what they are doing handmade clothes can look brilliant.

You have inspired me @ClothingDilemma

I used to sew a lot and loved making clothes for me and the kids. I realise now, with the benefit of some distance, that I was REALLY good, but just took it for granted. I stopped about 15 years ago, but at the time I had been sewing extensively for 25 years. I even made friends wedding dresses. I look now at things I made then, and the quality is just miles ahead of store bought.

It would probably take me some time to get back into it again, but I think I will. I told myself at the time that things had just become too busy between work and family, but actually I now think it was because I had started to need glasses but hadn’t realised.

YY, agree so much!

Likewise, new cloth should cost money.

I think it's OK for handmade clothes to be more expensive than high street clothes. We have lost sight of what clothes really cost, we buy clothes made from cheap plastic fabrics that are sewn by people working in sweatshops in poor countries and are destroying the world with all the fast fashion we buy. If the cost of the time it takes to handmake the garment is more than the cost of a similar item on the high street then the issue isn't the handmade item, it's the high street and we should be questioning that, not the people who chose to make their own clothes because they enjoy it.

I'm really not disagreeing that you find it cheaper! I'm not sure why you keep on about it. I'm just saying we need to compare like with like and not de-value people's time and effort (including people making cloth and clothing of all types). It's really not meant to be critical and it seems a shame to get stroppy about it on a thread that's mostly enthusiastic for the OP's lovely mum and her plans.

Your partner is an idiot, your mum sounds brilliant. My daughter likes making her own clothes and I'm proud of her.

Fabric land in Bristol is brilliant. They've got a website, it's a bit of a rubbish website but they're very reasonably priced.

Except in my long experience it is much cheaper. I'll leave it there now and just carry on making my cheaper clothes.

You don't need to use the words 'my mum'. - 'I'm so lucky, I've found a dressmaker, isn't she amazing!'

Does she do pockets?

He thinks that if someone asks where it’s from, saying “my mum made it” sounds childish. @ClothingDilemma

This is absolutely ridiculous.

Even if it were true, why does he care?

Why do you care what he says when it's so stupid.

I'd be seriously impressed if I complimented someone's clothing and they said their mother made it.

Sounds like your dp doesn't value or respect the skills and abilities of your mother.

What does he think about other traditional women's activities?

I sewed my daughter a silk blouse out of liberty print fabric with a vogue pattern. I think it cost £120 all in. So a lot more than Primark.
But the, you can’t get silk charmeuse blouses sewn with details to a specific fit for £120. Off the rack would be £300+.

You can save on pattern costs and get better fits by making your own slopers from your body measurements.

Absolutely get that - it's the same as the way for lots of people, the pleasure of buying ready-made clothes is combing charity shops and getting lovely things for a couple of quid.

The point, though, is that making clothes by hand isn't generally going to be cheaper than buying them, nor should it be. Your carefully-sourced second-hand fabric and haberdashery (and gifted sewing machine) compare to someone scouring charity shops for second-hand clothing; both are cheap, and I wouldn't like to guess which is cheaper each time. By contrast, someone who buys well-made ready-made clothes new, is probably going to spend less than someone who makes their own with new, good-quality raw materials. That's fine. It's not a negative about hand sewing. It's great that we all have these choices.

What's not great, is when people whinge that clothing is expensive and want disposable fashion, or when they're unable to understand why hand-sewn clothes are often sold for higher prices than Primark et al would ask.

Sure. But a big part of the pleasure for me is saving unwanted fabric from landfill, not buying new. I buy up thread, zips etc at jumbles so basically time is my only cost (other than the cost of the machine, which was a gift).

Its as expensive as you make it imo. I'm currently making a skirt from Liberty fabric that is costing £70 including pattern and notions , and my coat was £90 for materials etc. But I have made things cheaply , like a blouse from a single duvet cover and I also attend fabric swaps so have made things for the cost of thread only.

No, that may well be!

I definitely think it's something you get better at doing affordably as you do more of it, too.

I like buying new fabric. For me that's one of the lovely things about making your own stuff - you can choose. As I say, you don't have to dash out and buy expensive fabric. But all fabric has a cost, and it should.

I hope I'm not putting anyone off! I think people are more likely to be put off by unrealistic ideas about how much fabric costs, or how long it will take them. I loved making clothes for my DD, and I love sewing in general - it's so enjoyable. But I don't see why there's a need to pretend it's super cheap? It's not. Why should it be?

There are also tons of free patterns out there. Look on the threadloop app to start.