This is not a reasonable or responsible guide to gifts for seamstresses.
The following sewing gift ideas are:
- Expensive
- Indulgent
- Lavish
- Extravagant
These gifts are designed to spoil a sewist. And, don’t we all want to be spoiled from time to time?
Check out these luxurious gifts for someone who sews to gather inspiration for the holiday season. There’s a little bit of everything in this curated collection, from stitching tools to travel experiences.
It’s time to let money be no object when assembling ideas for gifts for seamstresses.
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Sewing Gear Gifts for Seamstresses
Time to upgrade worn-down sewing supplies with upscale successors.
OttLite lamps have proprietary technology that creates light thatβs closer to sunlight than other LEDs. This full-spectrum-mimicking illumination helps OttLite users see colors more true to life β a nice feature for when youβre picking fabric and matching thread.
RELATED: Bright Ideas: Lighting for Sewing Rooms
Antique sewing boxes are WORLDS closer to pieces of furniture vs. their latter-day tackle box and plastic tub successors. Many have casters, which means you can easily move them around your sewing space (and house).
If you invest in a professional dress form, youβll get a sturdy sewing tool that will last for decades. Dress form upgrades include removable arms, collapsible shoulders, a base with casters, and lower-body bifurcation (aka, LEGS!).
RELATED: DIY Dress Form Review: Bootstrap Fashion Dress Form and Arm Form
Since I wrote this article on how to pack a sewing machine for a flight, Iβve been low-key obsessed with Tutto sewing machine cases. You can insert a sewing machine into the bag from the top or the side, and it collapses to 3 inches for storage.
RELATED: Tutto Sewing Machine Case Review: Large Machine on Wheels [VIDEO]
Once you upgrade to heavy-duty dressmaking shears, youβll curse yourself and cry, βWhy, oh why, didnβt I get these sooner?!?β Knife-sharp blades make cutting fabric *almost* frictionless, which is a blessing for tired, sore hands.
A thread chart definitely falls into the βluxuryβ gift category. With a thread chart, you can pick the perfect thread for your project from hundreds of hues without stepping foot into a Joann (sounds like heaven to me).
RELATED: Getting to Know Sewing Thread Types
Sewing machines + lasers? Yes, we live in the future, for sure. This laser guide, which attaches to your machine, helps you sew straighter and more accurately.
This electric bobbin winder winds bobbins at one speed for uniform tension, and it works with almost all bobbins on domestic machines. A review on Wawakβs website said the CorgiWinder loads a bobbin in less than 20 seconds.
Pressing Tool Presents
Yes, even pressing can become an ritzy event (OK, maybe not, but go with it) with these high-end, iron-adjacent gifts for someone who sews.
How would you like to have two hours of steam time from one steamer? *Hands go up* Yeah, me too β thatβs what you get with this commercial grade clothing steamer. Can you imagine how fast you could remove wrinkles from fabric yardage with this tool?
OK, this is an expensive ironing board, but for good reason. It features an ergonomic iron tray, double wishbone legs for stability, and an under-board rack for keeping projects off the floor. For your reference, my ultra-basic ironing board weighs 8 pounds; this one is about 25 pounds.
Go big with a one-gallon jug of Mary Ellenβs Best Press, the beloved starch-alternative product. Many reviewers on Amazon point out that it doesnβt leave residue or flakes on clothes, unlike other starch products.
RELATED: Buying an iron for sewing: 5 irons less than $100 from Amazon
Gifts for the Sewing Room
These gifts for seamstresses increase the swankiness of a sewing space by 79 percent.*
*Not grounded in any legitimate science or research.
These headphones boast 24 hours of battery life from a single charge and an βAwareβ mode that allows you to hear your music or podcast AND whatβs going on around you. I *might* slide these on and never leave my sewing studio.
If headphones arenβt for you, consider this highly rated portable speaker with 20 hours of battery life and a powerbank to charge your phone. It also has the highest rating (6 of 6) for protection against dust, which does seem to collect rapidly in a sewing zone.
The DreamBox is a giant cabinet on wheels that opens to reveal a fold-down table and scores of bins, shelves and racks. The Sew Station features an electric lift for your sewing machine and a drop leaf for cutting fabric, and it locks into the DreamBox to create a stitching command center.
RELATED: 10+ Small Sewing Table Options for Space-Squeezed Sewists
Sewing Projects Supplies
Upgrade a ho-hum me-made garment with fancy-schmancy materials.
Needle Sharp offers subscription boxes for sewing projects and kits for sewing projects. Imagine: Everything you need β fabric, notions, pattern β to sew a coat, swimsuit, pajama set and more in one tidy package.
Splurge and get custom labels for your handmade masterpieces. Speaking from personal experience, it feels very official to sew a Sie Macht label to my one-of-a-kind clothes.
As I researched luxury fabrics for this article, I came across Tissura, which sells couture fabrics from European brands. These are textiles that put the βspecialβ in special occasion fabrics.
- Belgian Linen
The internet told me that Belgian linen is βthe champagne of linen.β For a fabric to be called Belgian Linen, which is actually a trademark, it must be made of European flax and woven in a Belgian mill.
RELATED: The Unrivaled Guide to Types of Linen for Garment Sewing
Linton Tweeds supplies fabric to design houses from Badgley Mischka to Brooks Brothers to Balmain. I love that the top navigation bar allows you to shop fabric by style, weight, price, and more.
The intricate lace starts with loading an antique loom by hand with thousands of threads. According to this Business Insider video, one square meter, without additional beading, etc., costs $45-$90, more than 10 times the cost of mass-produced lace.
- Vicuna Wool
Wool from the vicuna, a relative of the alpaca, is the most expensive fabric in the world; check out this yardage for $3,900! Now, if thatβs a *little* out of your price range, hereβs a cashmere-vicuna wool blend for a mere $400-and-change per meter.
Sewing Experiences
A sewing experience β travel arranged around sewing β has to be the most luxurious gift of all for a sewist.
Couture sewing instructor Susan Khalje takes a group annually to Paris. Travelers visit exclusive fabric stores that sell textiles to design houses and watch a master pattern maker and draper do his thing.
I attended Camp Workroom Social in spring 2022, and I highly recommend the experience. Itβs a sleepaway camp for grownups where you hang with other sewists and get personalized instruction from sewing educators.
If, and only if, youβre committed to the ultimate in outrageous gifts for someone who sews, you will buy a seat for a sewing machine so it can sit next to you as you jet away to your sewing retreat. (If youβre not committed to that level of luxury, hereβs an article about how to pack a sewing machine for a flight.)
Yes, these big-ticket gifts for seamstresses are meant to be tongue in cheek. They’re all unnecessary, and more-than-adequate substitutes exist for each of them.
But, isn’t that the point of luxury?
In any case, they can be legit inspiration for your holiday sewing gift list. Never fault a sewist for dreaming big and fancy.
Over to you: What’s the most luxurious sewing gift you’ve received (or have given yourself)? What’s the most luxurious sewing gift you can even think of? And had you ever heard of vicuna wool before? I hadn’t. #themoreyouknow π«
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It sure is fun to dream! Thank you for putting in all that time and effort to compile this dream list for us to enjoy.
Thanks for reading, Lindsay! π
Oh, that was fun!!! I have seen the large jug of Best Press at Joann although I don’t know if it’s eligible for coupon use, but that would bring the price down – I know quilters swear by it – I have not tried it yet but I want to, as the spray starch cans I use for shirts add up so it may not be such a luxury. My dad had “Handmade by Marian Thompson” labels made for my mother back in the 1960s and I still have some of them – maybe the same year he got her the Buttoneer and electric scissors, neither of which got much/any use, LOL! I would love to see the look on other passengers’ faces if someone actually did buy a ticket for their sewing machine and there it sat in its own seat, securely strapped in and waiting for liftoff! Thank you for giving us something to have fun thinking about and maybe even putting on our lists!
Hi, Mary Jean! Thanks for reading. TBH, I’ve never used Best Press either, but it’s supposed to be good stuff. I wanna grab a bottle of it next time I need spray starch. Apparently it doesn’t leave a residue or flake. I’m curious about how it would work with knits.
That’s cool that you have your mom’s vintage labels! I think when more people made their own clothes on the reg they were more common. You see them at thrift stores from time to time.
Funny clothing label story for you – one of my great-grandmas was a talented sewist (I didn’t know this about her until after she passed, so I never got to talk to her about it). I guess she used to sew clothes for herself and her family and take designer/department store labels out of thrifted clothes and sew them into her me-mades. Isn’t that fab? I love that story.
One of my older sisters was a real “clothes horse,” and the summer before she began college in 1965 she worked hard as a waitress to make money for a new wardrobe for school (a laugh here – at her college at that time women had to wear skirts or dresses – no pants unless it snowed, and certainly no jeans!) . She switched a few labels, too, when she found a good dupe for a more expensive item she could not afford, and harvested some labels from high-end stores from items we had at home. Some of the labels were little works of art on their own, with intricate embroidered designs on heavy satin or silk, as the quality of the label was considered an indicator of the quality of the garment.
Mary Jean, I LOVE IT! Thanks for sharing.