It's cheaper to make your clothes, right?

There is a complicated answer to that question.

It all depends on the fabric you buy and where you get it. Fabric can be expensive!

When I first started sewing it was winter, so I used fleece to make the babies outfits. I stocked up during Black Friday sales at Joann Fabrics. I was able to get them each 2 complete outfits and 2 pairs of pj pants for $36. Heck of a deal!

Fast forward to Spring and making myself a few dresses. I stocked up on fabrics every week when Hancock was closing! To make myself a maxi dress I needed 3 yards for the skirt and 1 yard for the bodice. My favorite dress the skirt fabric was $8/yd and the bodice fabric was $6/yd, so $30 for what I needed for that dress. Not bad!

In those examples, it really was cheaper to make the clothes than to buy them, but it is not always like that.

Something I have learned over the last several months is that 90% of the time you get what you pay for as far as fabric quality goes.

I am cheap. I don't like spending double digits on anything. CHEAP! I have learned how to be thrifty when buying fabric to keep costs down, but it is not that easy.

It's easy to stumble across a custom fabric group on social media or etsy and drool over fabric until you just HAVE to have it. Most custom fabric groups sell excellent quality fabrics. That means you also pay more. Those pretties can cost between $15 and $30 (or more!) per yard! Think about making a maxi with those. That's $60-$120 to make a dress! You can go to Target and buy a maxi for $30.

You also have to factor in the cost of thread and any other supplies you may need for your project, like elastic, snaps, buttons, new machine needles, etc.

Your time also is worth something! This is something to consider if you are wanting to sell the things you make. 

Let's go back to my $30 maxi. That dress took me roughly 2 hours to make. It is standard to have a rate of $10-$20+ per hour for your services. That would make my $30 dress worth $50-$70+ if I had made it to sell. This is why many handmade items on etsy seem to have outrageous prices. When you look at it this way, those prices don't seem quite so outrageous anymore. 

Now, if you're still with me, let's talk about how to get some good deals on fabric!

First off, COUPONS! 

If you have a Joann Fabric near you sign up for their email, text, and mailing lists. At the end of the year they sell a calendar that you should buy too. Around December the price of the calendar goes from $9.99 to $4.99. It has an excellent coupon for each month included, and it really is a nice looking calendar.

Joann's lets you combine all your coupons! You can use your text coupon, plus your email coupon, plus your paper coupons! Say you have 2 emails with coupons in them, you can use both of those too, because they have different numbers on them! In my experience, the ladies there will help you to use your coupons to save you as much as they can. Online you can only use 1 coupon at a time.

If you are shopping online, ALWAYS check Retail Me Not or Facebook groups for a coupon for the website you're on before check out!

SALES!

Coupons are great, but sales and clearance can be amazing!

Keep your eyes open online and in stores for some good sales going on. You can save 50%-70% with sales! Clearance fabrics are typically the seasonal types, so you can save by buying those fabrics now for next year!

You find most of the best sales around a holiday. Any holiday really.

I don't get a chance to go out shopping often, without the babies at least. I buy a lot of fabric online from Fabric.com. I always look at sales and clearance fabrics using the filter option to see just the types of fabrics I am looking for, and then sort from lowest to highest prices. Keep in mind you get what you pay for. In the description if it says that the fabric is very light weight I will skip over it because I know that is paper thin and hard to work with. 

Fabric.com also offers a bulk discount on many of their fabrics. This is wonderful when buying solids or a print that you can't live without!

Phew! I know that was a lot of information, and the question at hand is not completely answered, but I hope you learned a few things, and you're ready to go buy some fabric! 

*Disclosure: some included links are affiliate links helping to earn a few pennies to keep the sewing going.*