I crochet and have a sewing machine that I haven't used in a while.

Can I truly save money by making my own clothing or would end up spending about the same amount of money as I would for a finished product?

Well, may be what's missing is the clothes designs, if they are fashionable and affordably costing you, you may sell friends too not only save your payings in buying clothes, but may be you get more out of it. alot of crochet free paterns are found online,here is one link and you can google more
http://crochet.about.com/

Diana? (one of my two favorites names) is not what you can do but what you will have to do in the future.

I already have all the clothing that I and my family will need for the next 50 years but unless your are ready, as I am, you will then have the trouble of finding what you will need, most of the clothing that we wear now days comes from overseas and every day less and less clothing are coming in so that the demand is now higher than the import, that's something that not to many people knows about and the reason as to why I bought all my extra clothing from the "Senior Thrift Store" for 0.002 cents on the dollar, clothing that are in "like knew" conditions.

Buy bolts of material and put them away, I for one bought two seweing machines with extra needles and threads.........remember, I came from Cuba and I know what I know because of that.

Buy more shoes and at least two pairs of boots, I for one have seven pairs of boos for everyday use, three pairs of insulated boots for winter and one pair of micky mouse boots plus a pair of insulated over shoes that are collapsible to carry in my back pack also I now have 76 new shorts, underwear, and 101 pairs or work socks.

Like I said before, I have been getting ready for the past eight years and buying, little by little, all that I feel that I will need.

Be ready, not sorry.......

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"To be ready is not"... Ponce

"If you don't hold it, you don't own it"... Ponce

I am amazed from what you have posted Ponce, but how can i know who will be the members of my family for 50 years ahead , well,i am from the type of people that stocks things already, i don't know where are you located now, and for which place is your ideas applicable, a totally new information, all i have got idea about is the global economic crisis will affect trade much for the next 2 or 3 years but not more than this period!

Well Tina at first I started to buy for my family who are coming in from Cuba but after I was able to appreciate the quality of the clothing I then decided to buy them to trade with WTSHTF, to me that's safer that trading foo, guns, ammo, wisky and so on.

Every time that I go to the "Senior Thrieft Store" I come out with at least two bags at $2.00 per bag........the other day they had a special sale of $2.00 per bag......but.......they were larger paper bags and it was for anything in the store but for collectible.

Ladies dresses are sold at $3.00 per but on this special occasion I was able to get and average of 10 dresses into one bag (I got it down to an art) and let's say that each dress cost an average of $20.00 that then would mean that I got around $200.00 into each bag for $2.00, remember that all the clothing are in primo conditions.

At the present I have around 130 bags not counting the closet and dressers which are already full and waiting for the ladies.

Every day I see more and more people going to "MY" store but they don't know the quality as I do......I can see and then feel and then check the tread and count and stiches to learn how good they are.

Took a while to find out the why of this, rich people from CA are moving into my one mule of a town but here they have nowhere to go or occasion to use their nice clothing and because they are old their partners (once they die) donate the clothing to the store.

No need for me to go to swap meets or garage sales, all the I have to do is to go to "MY" store hahahhahhahahahah............

By the way, a 95 years old man die about three weeks ago and his wife donated all 500 78 rpm records to the store, I bought about 200 of them for $0.025 cents each.......what a treasure.

Happy hunting : )

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"To be ready is not"... Ponce

"If you don't hold it, you don't own it"... Ponce