Quilting Tools

Above: Some of my sewing stuff. I didn't even realize the majority of my stuff is green lol. You can see pencils, eraser, scissors of various sizes, cutting mat, embroidery hoop tape measures, ruler, scissor sharpener, and fabric for my current quilt project.

My friend Aline asked/suggested this to me after my last post about quilting, so in this post I'm going to talk about the tools of the trade, so to speak. So there is pretty much an ENDLESS amount of tools, toys and crap you can buy for sewing/quilting. I'm serious. I found this thing called a Fabric Value Finder. First thought through my head was "What is this? This thing tells you the true cost of fabric? What the hell? ...I can't make this shit up!" So basically, it's a piece of hot pink plastic that tells you whether fabric is light or dark. Yeeeuuup. I'll copy and paste directly from the website for you. "The Value of a fabric is the amount of lightness or darkness in the fabric. The Fabric Vale Filter helps determine the amount of value (lightness or darkness) between fabrics. The fluorescent pink acrylic plastic filter cancels out the color in the fabric to let the light or dark value of the fabric to show. This filter helps you avoid over matching fabrics with similar values. How to Use: Hold Fabric Value Filter in front of you, close one eye, and view fabrics through the filter." From: http://www.quiltersrule.com/notions/qr-fvf.html

Some of the other random stuff I found at the same place as the fabric value finder that is rather useful - and some that are rather "Whhhhy?!?!" inspiring - but not enough for me to go indepth into are as follows...
- Suction cup things to stick on rulers to make it easier to move around etc. This actually has some merit, because I have days that getting the ruler picked up is a pain in the butt.
- Finger condoms - er Finger Cots rather... It looks like a mini condom for a finger, textured for your pleasure... Er... ability to hold a needle rather.
- Magnetic spool caddy (essentially.) It goes on the end of a spool of thread, and holds needles etc.
- Ruler rack to hold your rulers.
- Designing paper (advanced graph paper basically) for creating your own blocks etc. Also come as sheets of vinyl that you can use dry erase markers on.
- Magnetic wands to help pick up dropped pins and needles. I'll be honest my family just uses my mom's magnetic bracelet, and it probably works better... seeing as how it picks up almost all the silverware in the dishwasher in one go...
- Marking pencil remover - Oh, but if I'd had this in high school.... oh, wrong type of marking pencil.
- Quilt soap - a very mild detergent. I use this type of stuff when I wet/wash fabric before preshrinking just get dust and stuff from the store off it. Except I use "Forever New"...which I bought and use on my bras lol.
- A chenille cutter to make your own chenille fabric. I have a thing from high school fashion class where we made our own chenille pillows. I'll post it one day if I find the instructions again.
- Plastic shape templates - squares, rectangles, French curves, waves, swirls, animals...the list goes on and on.
- Extension tables to attach to sewing machines - my machine came with one, handy.
- Marking pens/pencils are always handy. As is stuff like tailor's chalk... or just regular pencils, pens, pencil crayons. I find chalk etc brushes off or rubs off too easily.
- Bias tape makers - they have like little ones you just pull the fabric through, and others that are machines. I also found this nifty blog entry here where she uses a pin in fabric and an iron to make her own bias tape maker for any size bias tape you want
http://creativelittledaisy.typepad.com/creative_little_daisy/2007/11/diy-version-of.html

Okay, so now I think we're into the "big" items. Scissors, rotary cutters, cutting mats, rulers, etc that have quite a bit I can talk about. Also, I'll make a note now that I'm going to be talking mainly about the OLFA brand because that's what is most readily available where I've been looking/buying what few of these I own... lol. I'm not getting paid by them or anything... And it's the only one I knew off the top of my head, but they seem to be a good brand. They're an older company as well if I remember, so well established - they do safety knives etc as well as this crafty and artsy stuff www.olfa.com

Pins!
You could use typical straight pins, but they're kind of short, and most have small heads. Quilting pins have larger heads, and are usually longer. Mom and I have a few containers of these heavy duty quilt pins that are a heavier gauge, called T Pins. The other type of pins to use are safety pins - also known as "basting pins" except "basting pins" seem to cost about three times as much as safety pins. They also sell the typical bendy snappy metal hair clip as binding clips, and again they sell for much more than you could buy them at the dollar store. You can also buy curved/bent safety pins... or just bend your own. I usually only use straight quilting pins, I find the safety pins a bit too flimsy when I try to bring them back up through the layers.

Cutting Mats!
Okay, so we have one of these, and it's huge... like 1m by 1.5m or something. Self healing, also a bonus. They come in variety of sizes, and not all are self healing, so check that when you're buying. Most of them come marked with SOME form of grid ruler system on it - such as 1"x1" squares with measurements from 1/2" to 1/8", some have protractor type lines for angles as well. Watch when you buy them because some are metric, some are imperial and some have both. They do seem to like to slide on the table a bit as well, similar to a cutting board, so maybe put some scrap fabric under it to keep it from doing that. Or duct tape. Duct tape is your friend, but the insanity of what can be done with duct tape is for other posts :-p
So you have self-healing, not self-healing, and pinnable cutting mats. Oh, and they even have ones that rotate so you can use the angle lines etc easier. Or something. I don't own one, and I haven't really looked at cutting mats since we already own one. A pinnable one could be handy though. I can't stick pins in our current one, but that would help keep the fabric in place. These mats aren't overly cheap, but they're fairly priced I guess. Especially if you watch for sales and get the kits for half off or so - these kits usually include a cutting mat, a ruler, and a rotary cutter, maybe even a knife or two.


Rulers!
Okay, so rulers. There's tons of these. You have your typical straight rulers that you can pick up at any store. The 30cm/12" long by 3cm/1.5" tall ones made of metal, wood, plastic, whatever. These work pretty good for basic measuring, line drawing etc. The next step you're into the fancier stuff. OLFA has a line of frosted rulers (the frosting makes them easy to read on both light and dark materials) that range from the 1"x12" to square rulers as big as 16.5"x16.5". These rulers are marked in 1"x1" squares, and have lines down to 1/8" of an inch for precise measuring. Some also have protractors on them so that you can cut on angles - I own one of these types, a 6"x12" with the angle lines. Haven't used it yet, but I hope to find it very handy. These rulers also come in a variety of shapes - rectangles, squares, right triangles, other triangles. Most of them are non-slip, which is also helpful (until you need to buy one of those suction cup gadgets anyways lol.) Costs for the OLFA ones, online anyways, run about $6.49-$29.99, and I know in store they're more expensive. Other rulers handy to have are a meter/yard stick (I think these can run around $30.00 for a nice aluminum one, but look around), and I've seen my mom use dad's right angle marker thing out of his workshop as well lol. I know there are other ruler/other use implements available out there (like things to use to poke out corners, or fold corners or something lol) you just have to look for them.

Tape Measures! And not the ones sold in tool stores (for the most part)
THESE!!! MUST HAVE!!!! HAVE LOTS!!! They love getting lost, or tangled, or bent, or cut up, or whatever. Have lots. They're cheap enough lol. They have many different types - fabric, fiberglass, etc. I own the type that you fold/roll up, and at least one fiberglass one in a case that you pull out and it locks, and then you push the release button to put it back in. I also reccomend checking your measuring tape against your rulers. I have a ruler that is about 1/8" off my tape measure. And I have tape measures that are about 1/8" off each other. So check them when you're going to be working with both so that you don't cut something and then end up freaking because it's bigger/smaller on one of your rulers.

Rotary Cutters and Circle Cutters!
I'd recommend investing in a quality rotary cutter. I have one from the dollar store and it's wobbly as hell and doesn't have an evenly sharpened blade, so I end up with bits of uncut fabric and have to use scissors to touch it up. A steady hand and steadily applied pressure is also key here, but it saves a lot of sore fingers and hands if you don't have scissors rubbing on them etc - just don't cut yourself. Rotary cutters are a round blade on a handle and you push it along to cut the fabric. As I said, requires a fairly steady hand, and a ruler lol. There's a few different models offered by OLFA - an easy change blade, an ergonomic one, the classic one and even ones with decorative edge blades.

Circle cutters do exactly that - cut circles. You adjust it to be how big you want, then cut out a circle. They have compass styles, and rotary styles...yup... I don't own one of these. Yet. lol.

Scissors!
Okay, now scissors I can talk about. Not really about brands, but just there's so many types of scissors, and what to do and not do with them, etc. Now then, scissors and sizes - we'll start with the smallest. Technically stitch/seam rippers aren't scissors, but they're sharp and I don't have enough to say to give them their own section. So, anyways, stitch rippers are small (or smallish... some have longer handles) and pointy and sharp. Yep. You can buy fancy expensive ones, but I own those and I personally go looking for my cheapy dollar store/Wal-mart one because I can't get the blade of the expensive one into my stitches. Moving on! Embroidery scissors are small, usually 1"-5" long blades (although personally, anything over 2" should not be embroidery scissors) and are good for getting into stitches to cut them, as well as clipping threads etc. Next up would be the smaller/medium scissors, the 5-7" blades. I use this size for cutting out most small cutting jobs - so I'll cut out quilt pieces, but I won't cut out around a pattern for clothes or whatever. That's for the shears. Shears! Okay, so, these are 8" or bigger. I use 8" shears (I got a pack of 2 pairs, one is 5" scissors and the other is 8" shears, for $5 on sale), and my mom was given a pair of 12" blade tailor's shears by my brother - we don't use them often due to the size, but we use them occassionally. So as I said, I can't say much for brands, I have some of the "This brand is better than that brand" or "I would rather buy brand name than generic" but that only applies to certain stuff. One of the best pairs of scissors I had came from the dollar store. Now I did invest in "higher quality scissors" for fabric eventually (my 2 pairs in a kit for $5.00 on sale scissors) but I bought them on sale. Scissors can be expensive - as in over $40.00 expensive. So just try stuff and what not. Now then, for sewing, you will need at least 2 pairs of scissors. One pair for fabric and ONLY fabric, and another pair for general use like cutting paper patterns etc. Why is this? Because you want fabric scissors sharp. And comfy. I always want comfy scissors (mainly because I hate having the base of my thumb rubbed/pressed against to the point it's horribly sore.) Cutting paper etc dulls scissors, so you want two pairs, and a scissor sharpener. Or have your scissors sharpened professionally. Mom and I bought a scissor sharpener and I'm possibly using it wrong, but it seems to dull them more then sharpen. Also, you'll probably eventually want to own different sizes - you don't need two of each size, though, just two pairs of regular sized scissors, about a 5" or 6" blade - embroidery, 5", and larger shears. Scissor cases are also cool, and you can make your own. I just found a nifty and fairly easy looking one at this blog here http://wildolive.blogspot.com/2009/01/january-workshop-for-you.html

Quilting Frames and Lights!
I've yet to use these, but my mom says we have frames. You set them up, put your quilts on them, and quilt them. There's different types, like ones that stand on the floor, and have the quilt wraps around two bars to create tension for you, large embroidery-type hoops so you can sit with it in your lap (great if you don't have space like we don't lol), hoops on stands, stands that go on either side of a chair so you can sit in your Lazy Boy and quilt, there's lots of different ones.

You can buy lights that hook onto frames, onto tables etc to provide more direct light for quilting. I'm thinking of buying mom one of these for her birthday since she's blind as a bat lol


I think that covers most stuff... if not, let me know what you want and I'll see what I can do, but really, what tools you want to use depend on you, what you want, your comfort level, your skill level, your sewing needs, your space, etc. It also depends on what you can find and afford. There's all kinds of crazy shit out there.