Refashioning clothes is my next step in learning to sew. If it’s an old shirt off to the charity store, then I wont be wasting a whole heap of money on material and patterns if I don’t get it right.

Here is a collection of top refashions. Some of these websites have several refashions (it was hard to choose) so don’t forget to look around when you get there.

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A few weeks ago, I posted an article on making bags, which is an easy place to learn how to sew, but if you’re wanting to start sewing clothes, then a skirt is a nice and easy garment to start with. All of the skirt tutorials below don’t require commercial patterns, but are either pattern-less, or show you how to draw up your own easy patterns. Of course this way, the skirt fits perfectly.

I’ve scoured the web to bring together some great free skirt tutorials. I found so many wonderful skirt tutorials that it was hard to choose which to include. If in doubt, I added a link. I’ve tried to include a variety of styles, sewing techniques, difficulty levels and funky inspiration ideas so that mixing and matching from these tutorials means that you can make almost any type of skirt imaginable. There are a lot of skirts for young girls, but they can be just as easily be made for adults by changing the measurements or vice versa.

As usual, these tutorials are usually for personal use only, not commercial use, consult each individual website for details.

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I’m kicking off a new type of article for Frugal and Thriving -  I’ve been around the web and back again to compile some of the best free online tutorials and resources for a given category – today: making bags. Both the title and the picture are links to the tutorial.

I’m not much of a sewer, but I’m trying. I made a bag recently and have gone a little bit bag crazy. Making a bag is a great way to learn how to sew. Below is a range of different bag tutorials to try. They vary from beginner level to the more complex, in no particular order.

There are quite a few sewing and construction techniques in these tutorials that could be easily combined to create your own custom bag design.

Some authors ask that you don’t use their patterns and tutorials to make bags for commercial purposes, so check out their site for details.

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