Sewing Accessories For The Beginning Tailor Or Seamstress

Do you like to try out new arts and crafts? Have you recently decided to sew your own clothes, in order to either save money or to have more clothing options available to you? Sewing can be an extremely fun and rewarding hobby, but can seem confusing at first. You may find yourself wandering around the fabric store in a daze, wondering whether or not you'll actually need to purchase everything you see for sale. Fortunately, you can get by with just a few things at first. Here are some must-have sewing notions to get you started:

Rotary cutter: These look like a very odd pizza cutter, but they're actually used on fabric. You may have passed these by in the fabric store, thinking that you would simply use scissors and save yourself a little money. But once you have a rotary cutter, you'll wonder how you ever did without one. Fabric can shift when you're cutting out a pattern with scissors, making it a slightly different shape than specified. At best, this simply means that you'll need to take in your garment in a few places. At worst, the entire thing will be unwearable. With a rotary cutter, you can cut out entire pattern pieces without moving the fabric, making a better fit.

Cutting mat: Although you can cheat a little and use corrugated cardboard or poster board beneath your fabric when you're using the rotary cutter, it's not ideal. Corrugated cardboard isn't flat, which can cause your fabric to become slightly distorted. Although not as bad as when using scissors, it may cause you to have some fitting issues. Poster board is much flatter and seemingly ideal. Unfortunately, it is thin and easy to cut through. You may pick up your work and find that not only do you have a perfect sleeve cut out of fabric, you have a perfect sleeve-shaped piece of poster board and a sleeve-shaped mark cut into your beautiful hardwood floor. Avoid these issues by purchasing a large cutting mat from your local fabric store.

Seam ripper: No matter how experienced you are, you will have need of a seam ripper. You may use it to remove basting stitches, or it may be to correct a line of crooked stitches. Whatever your reasoning, it's much easier to use a seam ripper than to attempt the same thing with a pair of tiny scissors. 

Organizers: At first, it may seem like a silly expense to buy boxes that are intended for things like thread and only thread. After all, right now, you don't have enough things to even halfway fill one special organizer. While you can initially put most of your notions in an inexpensive box from your local dollar store, specialty organizers from your fabric store are much more useful. They'll help you not only to avoid lost items, but to prevent tangling of thread, lace, elastic and other sewing necessities. These types of items are likely to fit better and be more secure in a purpose-made box than in a box you purchase somewhere besides your local fabric store (like Brandt's Interiors & Workroom).


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