Material Gains

Advantages: being able to wear the kind of clothes you like without struggling to find them and opportunities to save money on clothing and household textiles.

Disadvantages: good machines can be expensive initially (though these will ultimately pay for themselves), the best results are often time-consuming, and larger projects may not be possible due to lack of space.

The break-up of my first marriage found me cashless, job-less, and stuck at home with two children under three. I needed to find a way of making some money that didn't involve a massive financial outlay or have me going out to work only to pay most of what I'd earned to a childminder. At the time, my solicitor suggested I had two options - I could become a childminder myself or… stick a few cards in 'phone boxes and stand around quite a bit on darkened street corners - quite what he thought I was going to do with the kids while on the job he didn't say. The red light bulb idea was abandoned pretty quickly (straits were dire - it did receive some consideration!), and most people in the house all day every day with small children could tell you why I didn't need anyone else's. And so it was that I sold my beloved Amstrad CPC 6128 (stop laughing at back - this was the cutting edge of home computing at the time!), bought myself a reconditioned sewing machine, and became a dressmaker.

Quite what the logic was behind this decision, I've no idea. At school it took me a year to make a cookery apron, and in an incident still legend within it's hallowed walls to this day, I was actually un-picked by the teacher after embroidering a tray-cloth to my skirt. Still, you don't know what you can do until you try, and by the time I gave up dressmaking six years later I'd successfully produced, amongst other things, articles of everyday clothing too numerous to mention, dozens of lifejackets (there's nothing quite like the terrifying thought that someone's life depends on your sewing to make you treble check every stitch!) wedding dresses, curtains, part of the set for the concert of a well-known band, and even re-upholstered the inside of a boat. I learned a lot along the way (mostly the hard way), and the purpose of this piece is for you to benefit from this without making my mistakes.

There are a lot of reasons for wanting to make your own clothes - outsize and very tall people often find it difficult to buy off-the-peg, and even the 'average' person can't always find just what they're looking for. Financial considerations aren't as pressing as they once were - with cheap overseas imports more readily available than ever, it's often more cost-effective to pick something up ready-made from a market stall. However, it is sometimes worthwhile, particularly with 'special occasion' clothes. I've seen beautiful wedding dresses and ball-gowns made for less than fifty quid, with the added bonus that these were one-off originals. Looking for a double quilt and pillowcases for my bedroom, I saw a set on sale for £6.50, so bought two and made matching curtains, lampshade and cushion-covers with the second.

A multitude of gadgets and accessories are available to part you from your cash when you take up sewing, but in reality there are just three pieces of equipment that are vital to the success of your finished product, probably the most obvious being your sewing machine.

The machine I was using when I first started out as a dressmaker was a second-hand Jones. It only had three stitch widths and was so old that it was probably used by Mrs Noah to run up curtains for the Ark, but what it did, it did well. It's since been superseded by an all-singing, all dancing Toyota, costing little more than the modern day equivalent of the Jones. This is allegedly capable of straight-stitch, zig-zag, blind-hemming, button-holing, and 20-plus fancy embroidery patterns. In action, unfortunately, what it does, it does badly. You only get what you pay for, and if you're choosing a new machine I'd advise you to spend your cash on a good quality model with fewer features - after an initial fit of experimentation, many of the 'talents' of my Toyota are rarely used anyway. An additional over-locking machine provides a neat finish and saves many hours of trimming seams by hand, but is not essential.

Your second most important purchase should be your scissors. Buy the best you can afford - more sewing projects have been ruined by scissors that wouldn't cut warm butter than have ever been ruined by an inadequate machine. You can always unpick stitching, but once you've cut your fabric there's no going back. Keep a separate pair of scissors for cutting out your patterns, as paper will blunt the blades.

Thirdly, you will need a steam iron. It needn't be an expensive model, but it's just not possible to construct a garment to decent standards without pressing the seams open at every step of the way, and some fabrics will only respond to steam. Press your paper pattern pieces flat before you use them too - creases in these can leave you with badly matching fabric pieces that are difficult to fit together accurately.

Since the popularity of dressmaking for economical reasons has waned, haberdashery outlets have become fewer (even in a city the size of Bristol I can think of only one or two), but it's still possible to pick up patterns pretty easily. Before you know it, you'll be altering these to produce garments that are more to your taste than that of the designer. I'd advocate that you go further, and learn the art of pattern drafting. It's deceptively simple (even for a mathematically challenged person such as I!), and once learned you need never buy a paper pattern again. I taught myself using a book entitled 'Metric Pattern Cutting' by Winifred Aldrich (currently £15.99 at Amazon), and for the price of a couple of paper patterns there's no reason why you can't do the same.

There are also the kind of patterns that come printed on a small grid for you to scale up using squared paper, the cost of which can be reduced using a 3'x2' sheet of hardboard, marked off into a 2" grid. Simply lay ordinary household greaseproof paper over this and, since it's semi transparent, you've got instant squared paper. Just be very careful to keep it still - tape it down if necessary.

To eliminate the terror involved in cutting into expensive fabric when you're not fully confident of the fit of a pattern, make it up using an old sheet first. If it's wrong, you'll know where, and if it's right you can always tie-dye it into something… unique!

Wash your fabric before you cut your pieces out, as some can shrink by up to 10%, and tumble dry it too if that's what you intend to do with the finished garment. Test a small scrap from the corner if you're uncertain about colour-fastness.

Detailed dressmaking techniques are beyond the scope of this opinion, but for these and general reference, the best book I have on the subject (and I have many!), is the Reader's Digest 'Complete Guide to Sewing', currently priced at just £9.48 at Amazon.

As always, the web is a great source of all the news on all that's newest on the scene, and a quick search throws up

http://www.lillyabello.com/sewdir.htm

http://sewing.about.com/hobbies/sewing/

Another useful online resource is the newsgroup uk.rec.crafts.sewing

If you decide to go beyond dressmaking for yourself and sew for other people, remember that the customer is always right. There's absolutely no reason why the gentleman shouldn't have a PVC mini-skirt even if he doesn't have the knees for it, but for truly awkward clients like the larger lady who wants a dress but refuses to be measured, claiming to be a perfect 12, you're just going to have to guess. Estimate on the generous side and you can always take it in. Your client will go from being needlessly embarrassed about her size to flattered that she's smaller than you thought she was, resulting in satisfaction all round and very often repeat custom too. These things happen.

You'll also require more space than you'd probably imagine too, and that's on top of storing your machines, buttons, zips and cottons etc. Although cutting out most garments can be done on the dining room table, cutting out curtains for even a small window can take up most of your floor space. It's also a good idea, before agreeing to make half-a-dozen four-foot inflatable stars from parachute silk, to ask yourself just where you're going to put them until collection…

I wouldn't want to be a dressmaker again, been there and done that now, but I do think that anyone who can sew for themselves are at an advantage. It would be a shame to see the art die out, and all the haberdashery outlets with it, leaving us with just the options on the rails. If you have the slightest inclination to pick up a needle and thread, give it a go. You don't know what you can do until you try!