The Sewing Kit: Your best friend

Let's face it. When our clothes get a little worn out and torn the vast majority of us create a new oil rag, chew toy for the dog or contribute to our daily landfill allowance. Clothes in this era are mass produced by industrial machines and foreign labor. They are relatively cheap and not exactly designed to last forever. But when you're on a fixed income and paying off your heating bill looks a little better than buying a new pair of work slacks, it's time to bust out the best friend and frugal fiend can favor, their sewing kit.

I learned to sew probably like most everyone else. In high school home economics, with a grumpy woman who looked older than the White House. And while I did forget a substantial amount of what the woman taught me, such as how to make a simple budget, I somehow retained the ability to possibly sew. Granted, I'm not going to be busting out designer jeans anytime soon. But you'll sure as heck bet that I'm going to keep that polo shirt that's missing a button or a jacket that has a torn pocket.

You can by sewing kits from any number of department stores. A lot of them are pretty good, too. They tend to be small and compact with a good and secure place for every bit of thread and needle. Which is a must, considering you can't exactly use it if you're missing half the pieces. But any good sewing kit can be made at home. And if you have all the material to pull one together, why bother to buy one?

Any half decent sewing kit will contain:

1. A sturdy and secure case, box or tin (To keep everything together.)
   
2. 2 pairs of scissors (Cheap-o paper scissors and fabric shears.)
3. 5 - 10 sewing needles (You don't need special fancy needles. Medium sized are all you're going to need for general repair.)
4. 10 - 15 straight pins
5. 1 seam ripper (For fixing mistakes, removing labels, patches, et cetera.)
6. Several spools of sewing thread (While it'd be ideal to have every color under the sun you only need to stick to some basic colors. White, black, gray, red and blue. Most small repairs will be in relatively hard to spot locations anyway.)
   
7. A pin jacket, cushion or book (So you don't stick yourself accidentally.)
8. An assortment of buttons (For replacing lost ones. Most clothes with buttons keep a spare sewn into a hem, use the seam ripper to tear them out.)

If you want to go nuts you can include lots of fancy tools like a hand held sewing machine, measuring tape, marking pencils and special types of fabric shears. But those are the basics that you're probably going to need on any given day.