Another point in favor of making your own clothes: you can pick the fabric. You can decide how far out you're willing to go for a fabric with a wonky cleaning method. (And you have a bigger selection of colors, depending on where you shop.)

I get really sick of going through racks of dresses at the store (when there ARE dresses on sale; I agree, Charlotte - this spring seems to be a non-dress season according to the clothing mavens) and seeing dress after dress labeled "Dry Clean Only."

Now, I'm smart enough to know that sometimes that really does mean "dry clean only." But sometimes, it also means that the manufacturer is being lazy - or it's CYA time for the manufacturer - because there ARE people out there who read "handwash cool" and figure that means it's okay to throw it in to an industrial washer at a laundromat on HOT. And then they gripe about how the manufacturer makes clothes that fall apart.

But the nice thing about 100% cotton is that it virtually always can be washed in the machine (I actually usually wash dresses on "cold" - mainly because they seem to fade less that way. And if the scary news reports are true, cold water vs. hot water makes no difference; you're still surrounded by a miasma of bacteria in your clothes, unless you're one of those nutjobs who washes everything with chlorine bleach [which would mean you only wore white cotton or linen as well]. I prefer not to think about such things as bacteria on my freshly washed clothes; I feel, learning about that, kind of like I felt when I learned that the Monarch butterflies that come back the next spring are not the Monarchs of the previous fall but perhaps their great-great-grandchildren. The whole raising-from-caterpillars thing lost a little of its glory when I learned that.)

There's also what I call the Polyester Issue - why on earth construct a top (or worse, fitted trousers) out of a fabric that does not permit ready air movement? It's not just the discomfort situation I'm thinking about here...in some cases, there's not enough cologne in the world to cover up someone who's been working all day long wearing some kind of battle-armor polyester. Even, in some cases, when some of that work has been done in air conditioning. (and I'm delicately eliding another, distinctly feminine, issue involving wearing too much polyester on the nether regions....)

Not all polyester is that way but I've had enough synthetic or synthetic blend "officewear" to decide that I'd rather be The Woman Who Dresses Peculiarly with my long cotton skirts or rumpled cotton khakis.

I'm not as much of a natural fibers snob when it comes to yarn as I am when it comes to clothing.

Also: I love my dad. I had showed him the knitted-rug book I got out of the library when I was up visiting, and I talked about how neat I thought it was, and how I wanted to make a couple of the things in it. Well, the other day, when he called me, he told me he found it for a "good price" on Amazon, and he ordered a copy for me and a copy for my mom, and he's going to send it to me as soon as it arrives. (I am guessing he didn't send it directly because he was angling for the free-shipping for the rest of the order).

So, that spiral rug I loved so much will eventually be mine. Now I just have to decide if I want to splurge on the actual yarn it was made with (the colors would go v. well in my house) or to figure out a substitute.