Sewing Machines This Season's Diy Gift

If you're looking for this season's hot gift, visit your family room.

Odds are you'll find someone tuned in to a DIY (do-it-yourself) or makeover reality show. The shows, complete with celebrities, budding fashion designers, decorators and stylists, have helped make sewing chic again and have turned sewing machines into one of the season's most popular gifts.



Trend watchers compare sewing's comeback to the recent resurgence of cooking. People tuned in to cooking shows and soon began cooking themselves. The same has happened with reality TV. People are watching design shows and are making clothes, curtains, decor, even duvet covers-all on their own.

Currently, there are at least 35 million home-sewing enthusiasts-and their sewing machines are nothing like the machines their mothers used.

With features such as built-in sewing advice that automatically selects the right stitches and recommends settings, like on the Husqvarna Viking Platinums, today's sewing machines are more like PCs, not at all like Grandma's green relic.

Some let you download data, new stitches and designs onto a USB stick, and some have microprocessors, motherboards, USB ports and memory sticks that can hold up to 12 million stitches.

Machines such as Husqvarna Viking Designer SE even accept a USB mouse. Point and click, and with one touch of a button, the sewing begins.

But the DIY shows haven't just brought sewing back, they've expanded its audience, too. Both men and women are sewing, and many are spurred on by male designers featured on TV. That's another reason sewing machines have become so hot this season: They appeal to virtually anyone on your gift list who likes to get creative.

Sew Modern-High-tech sewing machines are what's hot this season.