Sewing Tips You Won't
Find in a Book

Sewing tips make your life easier and sewing more fun. Sometimes you come across lightbulb moments that make you realize ways to make things easier.

Wether cutting fabric, sewing or working some specific detail, you find a trick that makes you want to run out of the house screaming eureka, I found it!

They're simple ideas that make sewing more fun. If you had known them from the beginning, you could have saved so much time and effort. You don't find out about these in the books, you have to learn them in practice. I've found a couple over the years, but these are my most memorable ones.

Vertical Pins

We all know how useful pins are. When I was starting to sew, I would pin horizontally, and had to remove the pins as I sewed. If you place them vertically, you'll find that the machine's foot easily goes over them. No more removing pins or dealing with sliding fabrics!

Freezer Paper Patterns

This is a widely known sewing tip but took me some time to figure out. When you are cutting small pattern pieces, trace them on freezer paper and then iron to fabric with the shiny side down. This will stick them to the fabric and let you cut perfectly.

It's especially useful for complex shapes with lots of curves or points. It also makes cutting satin and other slippery fabrics a breeze.

The Best Marking Tool

There are many fancy tools for marking fabric. A sewing teacher showed me one of the most useful and cheapest ones there are. A piece of soap! Collect the little pieces left from soap bars, especially the very thin ones and use them to mark your fabrics as if they were a crayon.

They are better than tailors chalk because they keep the fabric clean and you can easily remove it with the iron or a wet cloth.

Sewing Slippery Fabrics

Slippery fabrics used to be a pain. Both cutting and sewing was a huge challenge. Making a square that actually turned out like a square was impossible for me. I discovered that masking tape can do the trick. Just add some around the fabric before cutting to give it stability and prevent movement. You can do it for both cutting and sewing.

Un-sewing the Mess

No matter how good a sewist you are, you mess up every once in a while and you have to undo a seam. Even with a seam ripper, this is a very boring task. Here's a way to speed it up.

Cut the top thread in two parts of the seam, leaving a section of about 10" in between. Undo some stitches on one side until you have a piece of thread you can easily hold. Pull as if you were making a ruffle and ta da! The seam is gone. This works well with lose seams, not so much with the tighter ones.

How about you, do you have a couple of great sewing tips?