More Sewing Tips!

As promised more tips! These are some of the things I do that help me be a more efficient sewer. Everyone learns something that helps them in their situations.
These are just my favorite:

1. Bobbins. I bought a case for my bobbins, this should have been listed as one of my favorite gadgets. It keeps all those bobbins from rolling all over the place. Anyways, besides the case, I always have at least 3 bobbins wound in black, beige, and white. This way, I don't run out of a basic color in the middle of a project which causes me to unthread my machine to wind the bobbin.

2. Two rotary cutters. Yes, I have two. One I use ONLY for fabric, the other I use for felt, interfacing, and thicker fabrics. My blades last much longer if I do this. Rotary blades notoriously can dull quickly. Especially when you use them to cut materials besides cotton. I hear you can buy a sharpener for rotary blades. The ladies at the fabric stores say they don't work well. But owners of sharpeners say they are amazing. A sharpener is on my wish list.

*Oh, an aside about blades on scissors/rotary cutters. If you cut a lot of fleece do not use your good scissors or rotary blades. A worker at Joann's told me that fleece DESTROYS their cutting scissors at the cutting counter. (This is because fleece is made from plastic.) They had a couple of pairs that they only used for fleece to keep the other scissors nice and sharp for fabric. (She was mad cause the new girl next to her was using the good scissors on fleece.)*

3. Chain Stitching. When you are sewing quilt blocks or lots of straight seams, sew the seam then continue sewing off the fabric. Then, put your next item under the presser foot and continue sewing.  This helps save on thread and makes sewing quilt  blocks or the like very quick. When you are all done,  just clip the connecting threads. I also do this when I top stitch handles for totes and anything else that is just a quick straight or slightly curved seam.

A picture just incase you are a visual learner!



The promised pattern is on the way. Hopefully on Friday... I was hoping to post it today. Yesterday we had major power problems which of course prevented anything productive from getting done.

Happy Wednesday...is it Wednesday already?