Buy repair kits. It's an expensive way to go, but you only need 25 tailor/mechanical/electronics to make the basic repair kits. Unless you use energy weapons, you probably don't need to worry much about the electronic repair kits, so just try to get whichever of tailoring/mechanics is more important to you up to 25 effective relatively quickly. For high-Int builds, you can usually do that by level 2 if you try. Personally, I like to get mechanics up to about 50-60 fairly quickly (because things that needs mechanical repair kits tend to wear out quickly and it's helpful to be able to scrap those giant, heavy sledgehammers) and then pull up tailoring. By the time I have 50 tailoring, I've got a chest full of rathound leather waiting to be turned into leather armor, then recycled for scraps.
