I sew, and have a few machines, strictly amateur knowledge.
You can hand sew. Disadvantage: the stitches are not as strong as with a machine. Disadvantage: It can be quite time consuming to do it right. To do it wrong (bigger stitches), the stitches are weaker although the job may go quicker.
You can get a cheap machine used or a less cheap machine, new (Joann Fabrics, Walmart, etc.). Disadvantage: The machines are confusing, at least to me they are. They can be wonky. Just threading the machine and dealing with the tension from the bobbin is really a learning curve. If you don’t know what you’re doing, it takes time just to get it started.
There are machines now that are self threading. The machine that my library uses is about 1k, and it’s self threading. The brand is Baby Lock.
When I bought my machine, a friend that has been sewing her whole life and is almost like a pro chose the machine for me. It’s a Janome (Janome and Baby Lock are identical, probably made in the same factory). My friend chose the machine I got because it’s fairly basic. Maybe 10 stitches. She said you don’t need 100 stitches, you need like 10 (straight, zig zag, some other basic ones). The more confusing the machine is, the more things can go wrong, IMHO.
Of course, the advantage of a machine is once you get it working, you can sew, sew, sew till the cows come home.
What I do is use the machine at the library, which I sign up for, for an hour. If I’m making a pillow or something simple, it’s easier to do that than to pull out my machine and sit down and figure out the threading, the bobbin thread, the tension, etc. Plus the thread is not cheap.
My friend advises and uses Guttermann thread, which is not cheap but it’s made to last and it doesn’t have a lot of fuzz on it.