What are good choices for inexpensive sewing & hemming?

I sew, and have a few machines, strictly amateur knowledge.

You can hand sew. Disadvantage: the stitches are not as strong as with a machine. Disadvantage: It can be quite time consuming to do it right. To do it wrong (bigger stitches), the stitches are weaker although the job may go quicker.

You can get a cheap machine used or a less cheap machine, new (Joann Fabrics, Walmart, etc.). Disadvantage: The machines are confusing, at least to me they are. They can be wonky. Just threading the machine and dealing with the tension from the bobbin is really a learning curve. If you don’t know what you’re doing, it takes time just to get it started.

There are machines now that are self threading. The machine that my library uses is about 1k, and it’s self threading. The brand is Baby Lock.

When I bought my machine, a friend that has been sewing her whole life and is almost like a pro chose the machine for me. It’s a Janome (Janome and Baby Lock are identical, probably made in the same factory). My friend chose the machine I got because it’s fairly basic. Maybe 10 stitches. She said you don’t need 100 stitches, you need like 10 (straight, zig zag, some other basic ones). The more confusing the machine is, the more things can go wrong, IMHO.

Of course, the advantage of a machine is once you get it working, you can sew, sew, sew till the cows come home.

What I do is use the machine at the library, which I sign up for, for an hour. If I’m making a pillow or something simple, it’s easier to do that than to pull out my machine and sit down and figure out the threading, the bobbin thread, the tension, etc. Plus the thread is not cheap.

My friend advises and uses Guttermann thread, which is not cheap but it’s made to last and it doesn’t have a lot of fuzz on it.

Just to add, you can also hem using iron on tape, which is like a tape you put between the two pieces of fabric and you melt it with an iron, so it’s like a glue. Disadvantage: it’s not as strong as sewing (a few washes and the glue will dissolve). Advantage: quick and easy.

I don’t have the knowledge of using sewing machines like @jca2 , but if I had to hem something, I have basic sewing knowledge and I would probably go on YouTube to look up some basic tips and techniques. All my sewing skills relate to cross stitch and embroidery.

My sister has been sewing for about 50 years. She has at least 2 Bernina sewing machines, plus a couple that will do embroidery. She also has 2 huge professional embroidery machines – on which one would do baseball caps or professional looking t-shirts in large batches. She makes many of her grandchildren’s clothes. I only say this to point out that you don’t need expensive, high-grade thread. Any decent thread is fine. She recently sold a machine for $600 – paid $700 for it, used, 15 years ago. She said it was like losing a member of her family. She hopes the lady will treat it well. LOL Would you believe that upper end machines now-a-days can go for 23K?!

I did a quick search for: simple hand sewing machine and this came up:

http://tinyurl.com/5hekxufp

As you’ve probably seen, these are small, hand-held sewing machines that mostly just do hemming and maybe a seam. I don’t know how hard they are to learn to use, but I would guess they’re pretty simple. Just thought I’d throw that out there.

I can sew, but my machine is currently packed so if I had to do a hem, which I need to, I would probably use the iron on tape tbh. I can always redo it if I need to, and it’s not like the clothes will get hard use. I don’t believe in washing after every wearing so that wouldn’t be an issue for a while, either.

I think the small hand held machines work better with thinner fabrics like light cottons, like the kind of fabric you’d use to make kitchen curtains. I know for denim, if your pants are denim or heavy fabric, you need a thicker needle and I am not sure how well a small machine would do with that.

Ooooooh, the library. Nice, thanks. I see one of my county libraries has a small Brother machine that can be checked out. I put it on hold, I’m third in line, so in a few weeks I should get to try it.

In the meantime I can try hand sewing and iron-on table. Thanks, everybody!!

I bought a cheapy machine about 5 years ago. It works fine as long as you are just sewing fairly thin fabrics. If you have never used a machine there is a little bit of a learning curve. Creating bobbins, threading the machine, back and forth a little at the beginning and end to keep the stitches from coming undone, and learning to control the speed.

It’s so much easier to just pay someone if you have the money. Unless, you feel you will use the sewing machine to make other things too.