Hey everyone! I’m very new to tracking and sharing my spending and project output, but I’ve loved organizing this information and feel very excited to share it with all of you. I wasn’t at all surprised that these stats were majorly different from my stats in 2024 but I have some solid reasons for the variations.
First, we moved to Hawaii! And second, I’m pregnant! So there have been some major adjustments happening in my life this year. Sewing is still very important to me, but it definitely had to take a back seat this year as we’ve waded through some new (and also unexpected) waters (pun not intended but happily kept). How much I sewed and what I spent was cut almost directly in half from the year previous! And not from some altruistic goal of simplifying or saving money, but just from life!
In 2024, my sewing expenses totaled $958. In 2025 those expenses were less than half at $428.
And they are in half pretty consistently across every category, the only exception being “Patterns.” Last year I spent $34 on sewing patterns and this year I spent $38, the only category that had an increase! I’m not sorry about it, though, because I got some really good deals on patterns this year, including several for half off and one that was only $2! I bought 6 patterns total which averages to under $7 per pattern and I know I don’t have to tell you that that’s a steal in this economy!
There are a few changes from this year’s chart versus last year’s.
First, you might notice that I did absolutely zero sewing for my husband. Whoops! And sorry, Ben! He did nothing to deserve the neglect! And second, I included a new category: “For Holidays.” This felt necessary, as you’ll see in the charts! This category is specifically delegated for items that will only be used during the holiday for which it was made. This year, that included Halloween costumes as well as the stockings I made for Christmas. I have some sewing traditions surrounding holidays that were NOT included in the “Holiday” category because, while the sewing/giving takes place for a specific holiday, the item made can be worn year round. An example of this would be the pajamas I make for Christmas Eve. I try to pick designs, fabrics and colors that can be worn throughout the year, not just exclusively at Christmastime.
A very distracting picture of our 2025 “Christmas” pajamas:
I especially wanted to include the “For Holidays” category this year because it made up a quarter of my sewing expenses! That’s not nothing! You can see the impact here, as well, with items made per month:
I made 30 items total this year (last year I made 46). And you can see that my sewing output was greatest during the months where I do holiday sewing (April, October and December coordinating with Easter, Halloween and Christmas, respectively). December had the highest output with 10 items made, but 5 of those items were each of the stockings I made, 4 were the Christmas jammies, and I did make and finish myself a dress that month (not yet blogged).
And yes, I had a few months where my finished product output was absolutely zero, which is kind of sad, but also explainable. In February, I worked almost exclusively on the one quilt I made this year. I did finish piecing the top in February but didn’t have the quilting and binding done until July (which accounts for the 1 finished object that month). June and July were low months as those were the months we were packing and then moving. And July-September proved to be very poor sewing months thanks to a combination of moving, getting settled and also feeling incredibly nauseous thanks to the first trimester of this pregnancy. My sew-jo all but flew out the window, and I’ll admit, it hasn’t fully recovered itself.
This graph shows how much I spent per month on sewing and it definitely correlates with the above graph of items sewn per month. In years past, I will usually have one or two larger purchases in the $150-$250 range where I get a dozen or so lengths of fabric. That was not so this year, where I bought pretty intentionally only for projects that I was currently working on (there were a few exceptions, of course). Rather than several hundred dollars, my biggest overall purchase was $67 to Gardenia Fabrics for my Christmas stockings (and between that, batting and lining fabric, that was by far my most expensive project-probably just under a quarter of my total expenses).
My sewing was lower in every category, but most notably in things I sewed for myself! I only made myself 6 items this year, which I would suspect is the lowest it’s ever been since starting sewing. One big factor that influenced all my sewing and buying this year was the possibility of moving looming over my head. I didn’t want to buy more stuff to add to the stuff I would need to deal with if we ended up moving. I bought very little fabric and notions and a result of that happened to be that I missed out on some inspiration that I get from buying new lengths of fabric. I guess the flip side to this is that I used up stash fabric that might not have been used and finished unfinished objects that might not otherwise have been finished.
My biggest category for items sewn was for my kids, which consisted of Easter dresses, Christmas pajamas and a few items that needed to be replaced and updated. Even still, the number is lower than in years previous.
I included “Fails” in this bar graph! For me, a “fail” means that I started sewing something that I never finished. The first fail was a dress for myself that was clearly going to be too small. Thankfully, I had been using a cheap fabric that gave me no sense of loss when the project was scrapped. The other two fails were dresses for my girls that I was trying to create without a pattern but I was seriously hating the results, so those got scrapped as well.
I’m hoping that this year I can do a better job at tracking my expenses. I typically write down the total amount I spent, but I want to itemize cost per piece of fabric. And I want to note how much (in yards) of fabric that I buy and that I sew. I’m also hoping to do a better job taking process photos so that if something does turn into a fail, I still have photographic evidence of its existence to be included in posts like this.
The year 2025 ended up being a wild ride for me! I might not have done as much sewing as in years previous, but I’m still pretty happy for the sewing that I have been able to do. I don’t know how quickly I’ll be finishing up sewing projects this year, but I absolutely plan on getting SOME things done! I currently have a few projects cut out and ready to sew, a couple projects in the planning phase and at least 3 projects that are done and just need to be photographed and blogged. So even if I’m a little slower, I’m still here!
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