It is gleaming, electronic and full of exciting variations at the touch of a dial. It is also deeply fashionable. So much so, that last year Woolworths reported that its sales had risen 289% in 12 months.

Last week I bought myself one. It is now holding court on a table in the middle of the living room. As I plug it in, my children stand around it, looking on with awe. Auspiciously, it lights up. No, it’s not a giant iPod — it’s a sewing machine.

As the daughter of a feminist, I was never taught how to use a sewing machine. In the 1970s that sort of thing was infra dig. How times have changed. Nowadays disapproval of throwaway clothing and the price of summer dresses at Gap means that far from presenting a threat to female emancipation, a £49 sewing machine from Woolworths seems an astute investment.

Courses in sewing skills are burgeoning; at least three have started up in my area of London. Having spent a morning at home trying to wind a bobbin, install and thread a needle and complete a long seam without the machine’s terrifying “foot” running over my thumb, I have signed up for the Intro to Sewing Machine course at the Make Lounge, a new crafts centre.

After three sessions there, I hope to be able to put in a zip, construct a waistband and make a swingy skirt. My children are placing orders.

The Make Lounge also gives classes in millinery, knitting and hand-sewn repairs. It will probably be quite a hit — I know I am not alone in my

sewing-machine virginity. Somewhere amid the effort involved in constructing our highly educated, cultured, aspirational lives, there is an entire generation that has forgotten about home economics. Faced with the credit crunch, many of us are paying for lessons about domestic budgeting that we never bothered getting for free when we were young.

Will learning how to sew save me money? I dearly hope so. With four children, I know that diving into Gap Kids or even H&M to kit them out this summer would strain the credit card. My sewing machine and I intend to be at full stretch this spring, knocking out shift dresses, towelling ponchos and T-shirts. I know children’s clothes can be bought at knockdown prices, but the time spent winding bobbins will at least keep me out of the nation’s shopping centres.

For, if your consumer habits were forged over the past 15 years, it is hard not to venture into Whistles even if you intended to do your shopping at Primark. Whipping your credit card to within an inch of its limit is not cool any more, though. Not since the Opec-inspired oil crisis of the 1970s has the notion of living within your means been so hot.

THE reason for the rush to the cheaper side of life is quite simple: the cost of living has rocketed while our salaries have not. Yes, 0% interest cards are still among us, but all the other baubles that decorated the Blair years have gone the way of Bear Stearns. Cheap mortgages. Readily available loans. Buy-to-let bargains. Double-digit house-price rises. Bargain rail tickets, low-cost petrol, cheap energy. All gone.

According to uSwitch, the price comparison website, it will cost the average family nearly £2,000 more this year to live in the manner it did last year. And that’s before you factor in a new mortgage deal, if you are one of the estimated 1.3m people who, like me, are facing up to the end of a cheap fixed-rate deal.

“One of the problems in Britain is that we have been experiencing different inflation figures for income compared with the household spend,” says David Kuo, head of personal finance at the Motley Fool, one of the many consumer advice firms that populate the internet. “People have had pay inflation of about 2.5% but cost-of-living inflation of 7%, which in effect means a pay cut.”

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