10 Tool Tips for Quilters

Quilt­ing tool are a must have for quilt­ing but, how do you know what to buy and just how many ‘things’ do you need???

I’m a fairly non gad­gety per­son, I like to keep my life pretty simple (and I’m also fairly adverse to spend­ing money unne­ces­sar­ily) so today I’m shar­ing my Top 10 Tool Tips.   These tips are things I do and tools I use every day so, hope­fully, they’ll help with the tool quer­ies and make your life a little sim­pler too.   Where brands are men­tioned it truly is because these are the products I use, not because I receive free­bies or pay­ments from these companies.

In case you missed it on Face­book, I also made a little video this week.   Com­plete with a jingly little tune about the Tool Tips.

1 Cutting Mats

Over the years I’ve tried many dif­fer­ent types of cut­ting mats.   I sew and quilt a lot (no really, a lot!) so I need to make sure I have a cut­ting mat that will last the dis­tance.   For every­day use I have an Olfa 24″ x 36″ cut­ting mat.   It’s not very pretty to look at so I’ve popped a pic­ture of a few of the mats I use in pho­tos and for small pro­jects here.

To extend the life of my cut­ting mat (because they aren’t cheap!) I make sure:-

• to rotate the mat on my cut­ting bench. You don’t want to cut in the same place all the time as that will wear out that sec­tion of the mat in no time flat.   Spin it around reg­u­larly and you’ll find it will last much longer.
• nev­er use it as a coast­er for hot or cold drinks
• clean it with a non scratch scour­er to remove thread and fabric
• if it’s got grooves.… it goes: cut­ting mats don’t last forever so whenev­er I notice the grooves get­ting a bit unruly I replace it with a new one

2 Rotary Cut­ters

Where would we all be without the rotary cut­ter?!?   Prob­ably not quilt­ing any­where near as much as we do!   These things are a pleas­ure to use but, if they’ve got a blunt blade they can become quite a pain.

• Buy blades two at a time.  That way you nev­er run out and, as soon as the blade starts to catch on fab­ric or not cut prop­erly, you can change it over.
• Take it apart every now and again and clean out all the fab­ric dust that inev­it­ably builds up in any nooks and cran­nies.   You’ll get longer out of your blade that way.

3 Speci­al­ity Rulers

Spe­ci­al­ity rulers like Dresden Blade tem­plates or my favour­ite, the Blo­c­Loc half square tri­angle rulers can save a lot of time and energy.   You don’t need to have a draw full of spe­ci­al­ity rulers but it is worth get­ting a couple.  Choose one or two that match your quilt­ing style.  e.g. if you’re a paper piecer you prob­ably don’t want to live without an Add a Quarter ruler or, if you’re addicted to easy corners you might want to look at Doug Leko’s Simple Fol­ded Corners Ruler.

4 ‘Draw­ing Lines’ Ruler 

Quilt­ing rulers have a square edge which is per­fect for rotary cut­ting but not so friendly for draw­ing lines.   A run of the mill,  every­day ruler like your kids have for school has a tapered edge which is per­fect for draw­ing lines for half square tri­angle and fly­ing geese sewing.

• A 20cm ( 8″)  ruler is a great size and will work for most occasions.
• Make sure you have a white pen­cil on hand for mark­ing lines on dark­er fabrics
• Save the piece of card­board that comes with Laker Cakes to use as a draw­ing board!   It provides a nice stable sur­face that can eas­ily be replaced when needed.

5 Pins

First and fore­most… if you aren’t using them it’s a good idea to start!   Pin­ning your fab­ric togeth­er before head­ing to the sew­ing machine will improve your accur­acy immensely.   I’ve been sew­ing quilts for 16 years and I still pin EVERYTHING!

I’ve tried a lot of dif­fer­ent types of pins but it was­n’t until I came across fine gauge pins that I really felt like I was win­ning.   These fine, mostly glass headed, pins glide through fab­ric smoothly and nev­er ever leave nasty holes in your fab­ric.    My favour­ite fine gauge pins are:

• Little House pins
• Clover Fine Quilt­ing pins

6 Seam Rip­pers

No mat­ter how long you’ve been quilt­ing you’ll def­in­itely need a seam rip­per or two on hand for those times that a whoop­sie appears in your sew­ing.    The vast major­ity of seam rip­pers are made the same way.   There’s a pointy bit for get­ting under the stitches and a ball bit for stop­ping you from going to far but, not all seam rip­pers are cre­ated equal!    Seam­fix Seam Rip­pers come with a handy tool on the cap that makes get­ting all of the loose threads out of your fab­ric a breeze.    After I found this little gem of a seam rip­per I threw out all the oth­er ones I had and haven’t looked back since.

7 Bob­bins & Thread

I’ll let you in on a little secret.   It’s cheap­er to buy thread on a cone rather than a spool.   Yep, really.    I just restocked my white thread (Rasant 50wt Cot­ton Thread) and paid $19.50AUD per 5000m cone.  Com­pare that to a 1000m spool at $5.90AUD (aka 5000m would cost me $29.50) and you’ve saved around 33%.  That’s a pretty good sav­ing if you ask me!    (Just a little note: not all sew­ing machines can take a cone of thread but there are add on products avail­able for most machines which will let you use one).

Once I have the thread I load it up onto a whole bunch of bob­bins.  The bob­bins for my Janome sew­ing machine are rel­at­ively inex­pens­ive so I have about 100 of them.   75 odd are ded­ic­ated to white thread which I load in one hit and then, I have plenty on hand for when the bob­bin runs out while I’m sew­ing.  It def­in­itely saves a lot of time and hassle while I wait patiently for someone someone to invent a sew­ing machine with a bob­bin that holds 5000m of thread -:).   You don’t need to have 100 of them though!   Even load­ing 4 or 5 bob­bins at a time will make your life easier.

8 Scissors/Thread Snips

Right beside my sew­ing machine you’ll find a small pair of scis­sors.   I use them every time I’m at the machine to cut thread when I’ve been chain piecing and just like cut­ting mats, over the years I’ve tried many dif­fer­ent types and brands.     I was quite fond of the cute little spotty scis­sors for a while but that all changed when I found out about Kar­en Kay Buckley Per­fect Scis­sors.     They’re light weight and have cush­ioned handles so they nev­er hurt your fin­gers or hands and they have this tricky micro ser­rated blades.   Sounds fancy but that just means that they pull the fab­ric into the scis­sors rather than push it away like tra­di­tion­al scis­sors, and that my friends, makes all that snip­ping a lot easier!

9 Bind­ing Clips

These little won­ders aren’t just for hold­ing your bind­ing in place while you sew it!   I have them in two sizes and use them whenev­er I can instead of pins.   They’re per­fect for bag mak­ing tasks, hold­ing bias bind­ing in place and even keep­ing your fab­ric grouped and ordered!

10 Self Thread­ing Needles

Last but not least is a tool I like to use while I’m machine quilt­ing.    These little self thread­ing (or easy thread) needles mean that I can quickly and eas­ily bury threads ‘on the go’.     Pull the bob­bin thread up to the top of the quilt, pop both threads through the easy thread notches and then bury the threads inside the lay­ers of the quilt (without going through the back­ing).   It’s a much nicer fin­ish than using the knot­ting func­tion on my machine and, with the threads bur­ied, its highly unlikely they’ll ever come loose.

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I hope this list helps you out with your own quilt­ing and sew­ing.    If you have a good tool tip to add to these ones please leave it in the com­ments.   I’d love to see what little tips and tricks you’ve come up with and I’m sure oth­er quilters would too.