2018 In Review: How I Spent My Money

I have been very quiet, as far as sewing is concerned, through the last quarter of 2018, and not wildly active for really the whole second half of the year. As we approach the very end of the year, though, I feel like my enthusiasm about my sewing has been rekindled a bit, and so I am here, as always, with my thoughts about the sewing year that has just passed, and the sewing year ahead of me.

My planning for 2018 revolved around the central idea of using and organizing things I already had. I wanted to finally make some of the garments I've had in the planning stage for years. I also wanted ensure that my wardrobe was full of things I wanted to wear, that my pattern and fabric stashes were full of things I wanted to use, and that any new purchases fit in well with my existing resources. I'll deal with the questions of what I chose to make and how my actual sewing and my wardrobe as a whole worked out for me in 2018 in my next post. This post is mainly about the money and organization side of things this year.

Some general thoughts

Not too many sewing bloggers talk about the cost of our hobby, and I know some people would just really rather not think about and/or don't care about how much they spend, beyond a general outline. Or some people might be interested, but they don't want to do the kind of daily financial tracking that would allow them to analyze their spending in detail at the end of the year.

I have to stress that I completely respect all of those positions. I am absolutely not here talking about this because I think other people should do as I do, nor because I think it makes me appear virtuous. I do it because, well, for better or worse, this is apparently just a thing I do: I track my spending in meticulous detail. It's something I've done for years, ever since I was a teenager. And because I can talk about it in this kind of detail, I figure why not talk about it.

For me, I think one of the most interesting things is how my spending has changed over the years I have been sewing. For example, I'm spending more on fabric, not because I'm necessarily buying a tremendous amount more (though there have been some big years) but because I'm buying more expensive fabric. I find I'm worrying less about screwing up with "precious" fabric and much more about making the most of the fabric I use, in terms of making it last and look good after wearing and washing it.

At the same time I'm spending less and less every year on patterns because now I want any new pattern to add something unique and interesting to my existing pattern/magazine library. This is much harder to do after several years of pattern and magazine purchasing than it was in the beginning. I've also gradually changed my ideas about what I want my wardrobe to look like and therefore what I want to sew as I've developed my wardrobe plan. That's had an effect on the types of patterns, fabric, and even notions that I've been buying lately.

The Budget

My Budget goal for 2018 was: Stick to my 2018 sewing budget.  (Done.)

Budget-wise, I actually spent about 10% less overall this year than I had budgeted. I also hit my target elsewhere in my budget for what I spent on RTW clothes, so it's not just that I shifted my spending between the categories, as has happened in previous years. Most of this reduction in spending comes from the simple fact that I didn't renew my Knipmode subscription this year (discussed further below). That was a huge chunk of money that I didn't spend as I expected, and then I chose not spend it on anything else either.

I also recouped some money by selling a few things this year (including patterns, my old overlocker, and some fabric). About 15% of my original sewing budget this year was therefore funded by these sales, rather than "new" money allocated to sewing.

How my spending added up:

Pie chart of my sewing spending in 2018

Major purchases

I didn't buy any new machines or make any other major purchases this year. I did have to replace my regular iron, because I dropped the old one and it started leaking rusty-coloured water on everything, ugh. My new one was not super expensive (about £30) and it is great, much better than my old one, so I am not displeased by this outcome even if I wish I hadn't dropped it in the first place.

Fabric - 60% of spending

Goal: (a) Use 50% of new fabric bought in 2018. (I used 49%, close enough!)


No surprises here, the bulk of my money went on fabric. 60% of my total spending bought me 82.75m of new fabric. The good news here though is that I turned around and used 49% of that fabric immediately, and I regret nothing at all about the fabric I bought in 2018 that is still in stash. A lot of it should end up being used in 2019.

Goal (b) Reduce my total garment stash by 50m to less than 150m.  (Nope - I reduced it by 10m)

Overall, I used or otherwise disposed of 92.75m of garment fabric. This means my stash is exactly 10m smaller than at the start of 2018, at 190.65m total. This is very noticeably not the overall garment stash reduction of 50m that I was hoping for, but at least it is in the right direction!

What did change in terms of stash was that I organized the heck out of it. I now have a much more consistent set of colours and styles and fabric types, and a much better idea of how I'll use everything I have. At the start of the year I had a number of large pieces of fabric that I bought, mostly very early on in my garment sewing career, that I liked but couldn't imagine how I would use. Originally, I thought my task was to work out how I could use them. In the end, though, it was quite easy to let go of those pieces altogether, mainly by selling them on eBay. I haven't regretted that decision at all. My still-too-large stash is at least now made up only of things that I definitely want to use and that, when made up into garments, will fit in with all the other things I already own and wear.

A more dramatic change is that I did get rid of two thirds of my non-garment stash, around 65m in total. I had a huge amount of mainly bag-making and craft type fabrics that I finally admitted, six years after I stopped dedicating 90% of my sewing time to small items and bag sewing, that I wasn't going to use. I sold a lot of it for very little money in a big job lot, but it got it out of my stash and out the door, and again, I haven't regretted it. I still have more than enough to make plenty of handbags, totes or small craft items if the mood strikes me over the next few years, but it's a much more manageable stash now.

Magazines - 13%

As I've already mentioned, I spent a lot less on magazines this year as I didn't renew my Knipmode subscription. I subscribed for 3 years but while I did enjoy it initially, I found it overall quite repetitive and bland after a time. When the bill arrived this summer it was even higher than last year, plus the exchange rate was against me, plus they didn't deliver or replace one issue in 2018 despite me e-mailing them over and over and never getting a response, so I cancelled. I've barely noticed it being absent from my mailbox, which reassures me that this was a good decision.

I have just renewed my Burda subscription for 2019, and I'll also get Ottobre Woman in 2019. I honestly wouldn't go without these subscriptions at this point. Even though there have definitely been months in 2018 where I've glanced through Burda and thought nothing but NOPE, I still prefer Burda magazine to almost every other pattern source.

Patterns - 8%

Goal: Stick to 2018 pattern buying budget. (Done!)

I bought only 10 patterns this year (5 PDFs, and 5 paper patterns) and I bought all of them on sale. I only spent 60% of the budget I had set myself for patterns in total. A lot of this is just having a lot of patterns already, and not really seeing anything unique or exciting in the categories of patterns than I am open to buying. I did see some gorgeous patterns that I didn't buy; I just don't need, for example, any more dress patterns when I already have so many and rarely make or wear dresses.

Notions, Embroidery, Other - 19%

The rest of my money went on all the little stuff that goes along with sewing (notions = 11%): thread, elastic, interfacing, zippers, buttons, etc etc etc. My notions spending tends to be really lumpy because I buy in bulk. So I did spend a bunch on, for example, big reels of elastic for waistbands on PJs, but on the other hand I shouldn't have to replace that for a considerable period of time.

I also bought an embroidery kit (2% of my spending) and the remaining 6% of my spending was on some random little things that don't really fit anywhere else (fabric organizing software for my phone, my PR membership, etc.). I spent nothing on knitting this year, because I've felt indifferent to the idea the whole year and I'm not a yarn stasher, and nothing on books related to sewing or my other fibre arts hobbies.

In conclusion...

In financial terms, I think my year was pretty successful, except for my perennial stash reduction failure. Next year, I am going to stick to the same broad goals about how much I spend overall. I don't feel like pattern buying needs a separate goal any more, so I won't bother with it for 2019. And yes, I will probably still aim for a significant stash reduction, no matter how unsuccessful I was last year, and all the previous years, for reasons I will go into in my final of three posts early in the new year. In the meantime, in the next post I will discuss what I made and how my wardrobe worked out this year.