All you really need is a little plastic thing of needles ($1), some pins ($1), thread (varies but even good cotton thread isn’t that much), scissors (where you might actually consider investing a little - do not use these scissors for anything else, and consider a rotary cutter if you really get into it), and fabric.
Fabric might seem like the pricey part of the equation, but consider how much a thrift store is going to charge you for a duvet or a pile of t-shirts! I have something like 30 t-shirts I spent maybe $5 on several months ago, and I’ve been working through that pile for a while.
You can turn a t-shirt into a pillow, a reusable bag, use the scraps to patch clothing, make dolls, quilts… The bits that get to be so small to be unusable for a scrap quilt you can use to stuff things.
It takes a lot of time compared to machine sewing, but it’s an activity that can be done while watching a tv show.
I hand-sewed some goat legs for halloween last year with basically zero sewing knowledge, it was genuinely such a blast to figure stuff out :D Took like 2 weeks worth of evenings while watching a show but 10/10 would do again.
spoiler
Very cool.
Got any plans for this coming Halloween?
This Halloween falls on a friday, so I’ll probably just be wearing the legs to work with a normal shirt and not mention them at all. Gotta fix all the hot-glued parts until then though, they fell apart very fast last year and I haven’t fixed them yet lol