making your own clothes and accessories

[prism]

at first i thought i'd make a "sewing" topic but i thought generalizing to "making your own clothes and accessories" would be more inclusive for our smallish userbase.

do you make your own clothes? or repair your own clothes?

[prism]

i intend to document my journey of researching and buying a sewing machine here.

i'm finding it difficult to find authoritative reading material online with regard to purchasing vintage sewing machines. i would like to create a shortlist of sewing machines that:

- are user repairable
- have a button holer (for holing buttons!)
- could be used to sew heavier materials as well as light ones
- don't completely break the bank

bonus/optional criteria:

- are customizable via fashion bobbins
- have an all-metal body

i know i'm kinda asking for a lot, and maybe i should be moving more criteria into the bonus/optional section.

[belacqua]

i make my own clothes! sweaters and scarves, mostly, through crochet. raglan construction is my favourite, i prefer working in the round to avoid excessive sewing, and my favourite thing is being able to adjust patterns to match my measurements: i prefer BIG sweaters that are long enough to drown in, with very tapered sleeves due to having thin wrists, a combination that can be hard to find off of the shelf. plus, you get to customize the fibre content, which is very important to me as someone who runs quite warm, breathable natural fibres are lovely, and i like making silly stripy combinations or adding accent colours at the collar and cuffs.

[prism]

hell yeah, belacqua. thanks for sharing. would love to see something you've made sometime if you're open to sharing!