by H. Graciela Dyer

Created on: January 28, 2009   Last Updated: January 29, 2009

Although the word "budget' was never mentioned when I was growing up, pretty much all of my clothes, screamed "cheap!" "hand-me-down!" or, most shameful of all, "rummage sale!"

When I began to earn my own money, I decided that living on a budget was less a matter of limiting my options than refining my needs and adapting my habits accordingly. I enjoyed good food, for example, but, I had found ways to make tasty meals from cheap cuts of meat and in-season vegetables. I knew it had to be possible to dress with style and still keep a roof over my head.

I began to investigate the town's thrift stores and located three or four within easy reach. I discovered that shopping at certain times of the year, when people would be likely to clear out their closets to make room for the new season's garments, for example, helped to avoid wasted trips when I'd return empty handed. Thus began my long and satisfying acquaintance with the thrill of buying designer clothes for a fraction of their original cost.

As I became more skilful, these shopping sprees took on a life of their own, and I'd be able to rely on a kind of radar to zoom in on a perfect coat with just one button missing, or a gorgeous dress that only needed a few stitches in its hem. Once in a while I'd slip up and arrive home with a garment that it was too small, too large or had an unsightly stain down its front, but mostly I found lovely, barely used, well-cut garments that I wore and wore.

One of the dangers of thrift-store shopping, however, is the urge to buy more than you can carry, which results in you emerging from the store with an armful of clothes that may not suit you after all, or that you've squeezed into in the store, but you know in your heart will never really fit properly. This brings me to perhaps the most obvious route to dressing on a budget: sewing your own clothes.

If you go the "new" route, acquiring a sewing machine can be quite costly. But you don't need a machine with 766 stitch functions and a 1-step auto buttonholer. You just need something that sews in a straight line and won't leave a streak of oil on your fabric, or come unthreaded every five stitches. There's no need to even look for a brand new sewing machine, however, because people throw sewing machines out all the time often virtually unused. You can find them at estate sales, rummage sales, and for sale or exchange on websites such as Freecycle or Gumtree. And I can almost guarantee that you have at least one friend who owns a

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