Here's a tip for those who sew...

What do you do with the bobbins that have a little bit of a random color of thread left on them?  Sometimes you can get away with pairing it with a close color of thread on a not-so important project, but otherwise they end up piling up until you have dozens of bobbins and none near the color you need.  The same goes for spools of thread with a tiny bit left that are cluttering your sewing area.

Now when I have to sew in something like interfacing, do a lot of basting, or sew inside seams, I put one of those random bobbins on the top of the machine or use a spool of almost-empty thread, and I don't worry if the bobbin doesn't match the main thread, and use those to sew those areas that will never see the light of day.  I just made a diaper bag for my sister that took a lot of sew-in interfacing and basting, and was able to empty three lonely bobbins and two near-naked spools!  If basting will be removed, using thread that contrasts with your fabric makes it easier to see what stitches need to come out.

Or maybe you're feeling artsy and want your visible seams to look like you just grabbed random thread.  Just remember that a bobbin can work just as well on the top of your machine!

In my first post on cloth diapering, I shared what I was using for my first daughter.  But with a newborn on the way, I decided to look into other options for cloth diapers, mainly because I wasn't sure what worked well enough for a toddler who, frankly, had solid poo, would hold newborn blow-outs.  I'll ended up taking two roads of homemade diapers - one not too frugal, but high quality and still cheaper than disposables, and the other one was so simple, effective, and cheap that it was almost painful after all the money and time I spent on the first batch.

This morning I hit Joann Fabric's Black Friday sale.  I was one of the first (50 people) in the doors at 6:00 am, and it was all the craziness you'd expect it to be...and more.  When I left the store (2 hours later), I felt like I played the game pretty well and was happy with what I bought and the amount of money I spent and saved.  Day-after-Thanksgiving shopping is not a tradition for me; it takes a pretty compelling reason to get me out of bed at 5:30 in the morning.  But this year, after looking over their ad and coupons, and considering that they had snuggle flannel on sale for 99 cents a yard plus the fact that I have a baby due in four months, I decided to give it a shot.

As I waited for the cutting counter for over an hour, I got to see the many different ways people handle a sale as great as 99 cents a yard for snuggle flannel. There were women buying a dozen entire bolts, and I felt like I hardly bought any compared to the people around me.  I overheard some of the women talking about how they collected fabric.  Now if you're really into sewing and like having a selection of fabric in your home and have a system to use it all up to minimize waste, then, hey, you could probably give me some good feedback on this post.  But I'm writing to the casual person who sews often enough to stock up at a sale time, but not often enough to walk into their sewing room on a daily basis and think, "Hmmm, what do I want to make today?"

So here is the goal: Sew, save money, minimize waste, end up with useful things. 

This is a discovery that I'm tempted to hoard for myself, but that's hardly kind. =)

For those who sew, or are thinking about learning... go to ebay and do a search for "sewing patterns."  They have all sorts of patterns, and hardly anyone is bidding on them!  

Granted, buying used patterns runs the risk of missing parts, but they have some lots that include several patterns with cheap shipping, and no takers.  There's also some brand new patterns reasonably priced.  I've seen everything from baby clothes to wedding dresses. 

To make your search easier (for those who aren't that familiar with ebay) after you search for sewing patterns, on the left side of the screen there's a link for "sewing patterns." Click that and then it will break down the results by the type of patterns, like women's or children's or whatever else.   Also keep in mind to add in the shipping, because sometimes by the time that's included you may as well pick it up at the fabric store.

Some of the clothes are outdated, but there's always Halloween to think about!

For Father's Day this year, I decided that David needed a new pair of pajama pants, since he only has one pair that I bought him before we were married.  I figured it would be good practice sew them myself and found an inexpensive pattern (Simplicity #9871) but when I went to look at material, not only did I not find anything I liked, but would end up spending almost $8 for fabric alone.  Considering that, the cost of the pattern, and the time, I may as well buy a pair.

But then I went to Ross and hunted through their mismatched sheets.  Stores like Ross and Big Lots sell single sheets at a huge markdown because you may or may not be able to find a match.  After a bit of digging, I finally found a queen size flat sheet in a material and pattern I really liked for only $6.  A queen size flat sheet is 81" x 96", which comes out to about 4.5 yards of material (if my math is right!) at about $1.30 a yard, compared to $4 a yard at the fabric store.  I have enough of the sheet leftover for another pair of pants, so it's two pairs of pants for $10 (including the pattern).  Not a bad deal. (I'm also considering making a pair of pajamas for Amy out of the leftover instead.) It also took almost a yard of elastic, which I got on a 50% off markdown.  My mom has literally buckets of thread, so I just raided her collection and found almost a perfect match.

The pattern was really easy, even for a beginner like me! Even though it's not perfect, they're wearable. The pattern calls for a drawstring, but I skipped that part. (but next time I'm going to try to figure it out, at least for the sake of learning!) I was able do the whole thing in an afternoon.  And David's been wearing them, so I must have done something right!

Before:

Everything in this photo was free, long story short. The walls were also painted that color when we moved in.

I avoided using cloth diapers for a long time, even though my aunt passed down all the gear I would need, including dozens of hand sewn diapers and a giant stack of cotton prefolds that took the rubber pants & pins route.  I finally gave it a try when Amy was five months old, but gave up after a week because after all my efforts to get her on a good sleep routine, she would wake up as soon as she was wet. So I - probably too quickly - concluded that it wasn't worth it and went back to disposables.

But at 15 months old...I began to think, again, that I had all the stuff so it was silly of me not to use it.  And now that Amy was a sound sleeper, maybe it would go better this time around.   I took another look at the arsenal my aunt passed down, but realized that hardly any of the rubber pants fit Amy anymore.  So I decided to do a consignment run for rubber pants, which, to my surprise, turned up all sorts good cloth diapering gear.  I also tried sewing some of my own, which went pretty well. In the end, I got my whole diapering set-up for about $60, and that includes some fleece material I bought for diapers and have yet to use. The $60 also covers ALL sizes, since I also picked up some smaller stuff as I found it because we'd like to have more babies in the not-to-distant future.

I've seen many people try to do something creative to save money, fail miserably, and then give up on that thing forever.  But as the old saying goes, "If at first you don't succeed, try and try again."  This is very true in frugal living.  To encourage you all to give past failures another go, here is a list of some of my own, not failures, but learning experiences:

I am lethal to many plants.
Right after David and I got married, he gave me a potted begonia. I promptly overwatered it and one night it very dramatically fell over from rotting at the base.  After I heard the thunk, I thought that it was one thing when a plant slowly wilts or fades away, but it's another when it falls over like it's given up on life. Last summer I tried container gardening on my balcony, and even killed the lavender. Now that I have a yard, I'm trying a vegetable garden. Out of all the seedlings I started in my kitchen, the few survivors include one hardy pickling cucumber and several tiny bell pepper plants.  But no worries...I've learned from killing all these plants, and gradually my thumb is turning greener.  Since so many of my seedlings didn't take, I just picked up some baby plants at a produce market, and am moving on to step two...getting those little guys to survive in the ground.  It's easy to give up on gardening because the trial and error has so much waiting time, but I figure that if I improve a little each year, then when I'm a grandma I'll have an amazing garden.

Who says food needs to taste good?
My husband and daughter, for starters.  Overall I'm a decent cook, with a wild success here and there, but I've had my share of  "oops" in the kitchen. My first attempt at making homemade bread produced some weird, brick-hard blob that wasn't even fit to feed ducks.  Just last night I tried to make some turkey patties with stuffed with oatmeal and bread crumbs and mushrooms and stuff like that - frugal and healthy! But when David saw them the conversation went something like this:

"I thought you said we were having turkey burgers."

"They are turkey burgers!"

"Oh. What did you do to them?"

"They have bread crumbs and stuff in then."

"It looks like meatloaf. Have you tasted them yet?"

"No..."

David picked a tiny piece of a corner.  "They're all spongy and gross. What's wrong with just having meat in a burger?"

I sighed. "Well, maybe it'll taste better once it's on the bun."  And if I stuck more to the recipe, I thought. Since I was missing some ingrediants I improvised and got a little carried way thinking of all the things I could add to the ground turkey.  So will I try them again? Sure, but next time I'll follow the recipe a couple times before I start getting creative.  If there's one phrase that applies to cooking, it's "know the rules before you break them."

She's little and doesn't wear most of her clothes out of the house anyway...
Recently I took up sewing with this plan in mind: Start with diapers, because no one sees those.  I've done pretty well on very basic diapers, so now I'm moving up to pajamas.  I took advantage of a great fabric sale and bought a lot of cute flannel (only to realize that I could have just got some flannel sheets that had more material for less money...) and a pattern recommended by a friend who's an amazing seamstress.

It would take forever to list all the things that went wrong to lead to her still not done jammies that have a top that could fit a four year old and bottoms that look like capri maternity pants for a two year old.   But no worries...I got another pattern that's easier to follow (and the correct size!), and enlisted my mother to come over and walk me through it. As long as I keep trying, she might have a pair of pajamas she can wear to a slumber party when she's eight.


And there's a number of other areas where I've learned...like thinking I found a remarkable deal when something goes on sale for 30% off, only to come back a week later and find the same thing on sale for 50% off (patience always pays!).   I bought stuff that seemed like a great idea at the time, only to never use it.  And my biggest irritation is fridge cleaning day where I end up throwing a food that I could have eaten - or gotten creative and reworked - before it went bad. (Wasting food AND money really boils a tightwad's blood). But I'm still young, and there's plenty of time to mentally file away mistakes so I can improve on techniques in the future.  My first few months throwing effort into saving money seemed like a frustrating string of failures and wastes, but since then I've become more productive and learned more than I ever expected I would.

So if the bread doesn't rise, the shirt doesn't fit, the tomatoes all get eaten by bugs, hang in there. There's always next time.