Sewing-supplies   |   Shopping Guide: Essential Sewing Supplies for Beginners

Shopping Guide: Essential Sewing Supplies for Beginners

By a Bug & a Bean | Posted on 2025-01-25

Curated shopping guide of essential sewing supplies for beginners that will save you time and money. Start here if you are new to sew and find everything you need to get started and sew through our favorite tutorials.

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Table of Contents

• Machines
• Ironing
• Cutting
• Pinning, Marking, Working with Patterns
• Project Embellishments

Find essential supplies from our curated sewing supply list for beginners. These products will help you to get started sewing and are commonly used in our video tutorials.

Machines

There are many different sewing machines in all different price ranges. You can absolutely get started with a cheap machine or a used machine from marketplace or a local thrift store. However, if your machine was not properly maintained, it could be a hectic headache. If you are able to splurge, some of the features I can't believe I lived without on my first machine are a variety of stiches with the ability to customize stitch length. This is essential for setting a custom length for machine sewing buttons as an example. Another feature that has made my life so much easier is automatic needle down. One last silly feature is when I first started teaching my daughter to sew, it was hard for her to reach the sewing pedal. There is a feature where you can press the play/pause button on the top of your machine that helped her get started sewing.

Beginner Sewing Machines

Additionally, you might want additional machines like a serger, sublimation printer, or embroidery machine. A serger is used to overlock and cut the fabric on seams. It is especially useful when sewing knits. An example of this is if you look at the seam on a t-shirt. It gives your projects a professional finish. A sublimation printer is not specific to sewing but I use it in a lot of my projects. It prints using special ink that you can iron onto sublimation blanks and certain fabrics. In this project, I use my machine to create custom tags for my sewing projects. An embroidery machine is great to have on hand if you are able to purchase one. They allow you to program a design or name and add custom embroidery to your sewing projects (and everyday fabric items you have at home)!

Additional Machines

Ironing

A good amount of time on sewing projects is spent ironing. I have a couple irons of different sizes. You will want to make sure you have a small iron for hems. I also have a larger iron for when I am working on clothing and ironing my finished projects.

Ironing Tools

Cutting

Its a toss-up whether more time is spent ironing or cutting. Either way, these tools are absolutely essential for almost every project tutorial on this website. If you are just getting started, you absolutely need a self-healing mat (the bigger the better), and a rotary cutter.

Cutting Tools

Pinning, Marking, Working with Patterns

When transferring patterns to fabric and preparing to sew, you will often need to make marks on your fabric, pin or clip fabrics together, pin pockets on fabrics, and keep patterns weighted down while sewing. These products are essential for these tasks and help make the process go smoothly!

Marking & Pattern Tools

Project Embellishments

These items are miscellaneous embellishments used in many of the projects on this website. These include things like plastic snaps, zippers, magnetic snaps, carabiner clips, keychain loops, and fusible interfacing.

Sewing Extras

Now that you have your supplies, browse our sewing projects and get ready to start creating!