It’s September and kids are back to school.  At any rate, the stores have all their “back to school” sales on.  Do you take advantage of these sales for your sewing room?

I do.  Here are some of the products I use in my sewing room and some are suggestions from other bloggers and quilters.

• A flannel back tablecloth is great for a design wall … especially if I’m going sewing somewhere besides in my home.
• Hair clips are great for clipping labels onto fabric
• Spray bottle for water (I always use a dry iron … and I spray the fabric if I want steam)
• Shelf liner
  • will hold your sewing machine foot in place
  • add it to the back of pincushions to prevent them from slipping around
  • in a pinch, you can use a couple of pieces (3″x 3″) to place under your hands when you free motion quilt
  • Put a small square between your small rulers and your fabric – it’ll prevent the ruler from shifting
• Hair ties – place them around the thread and the bobbin and you know which bobbin goes with which thread … plus it keeps the thread from unwinding

These are the small hair ties … they are cloth covered elastics. You can see in the picture how small they are. When my thread and bobbins are in the drawer, it’s super easy to figure out which bobbin goes with which spool of thread. Plus there isn’t miles of thread all over!

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Notebook with grid lines … for planning that next quilt and Pencil crayons to colour your quilt

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Mechanical pencils for fine lines (on the back of HST) or to mark the centre of a block

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Elmer’s School Glue … I use this a LOT … dilute it 4 parts water to 1 part glue and it’s perfect for gluing down binding or whatever needs to stay in place.

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Binder clips – they are perfect to supplement your smaller clips … great when you have a large number of pieces or ???

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Flag post-its, or just plain post-it notes are perfect for short-term labels.

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Disappearing Elmer’s Glue Stick. These have MANY uses. I often use it to pre-baste my binding. Then when I get to the sewing machine, binding is done in a flash. It also works well with applique pieces … apply glue to the back, iron in place and applique to your heart’s content!

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Coloured Sharpies … OK … confession here … these are great for colouring that white thread that is showing, or for outlining shapes (as per Helen Godden).

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Painters tape. I use it to label things and to quickly mark my sewing lines when quilting.

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These “Stained” Sharpie markers are fantastic for quilt labels, or anything you want to permanently mark.

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Disposable Cutting Mats (or one that is well worn) can be used to cut out templates

small pencil boxes/containers for holding sewing supplies. The larger ones are great for holding my rotary cutter, snips, pencil, thread, etc for heading to retreat safely. 

Don’t Forget!

I am now a Silly Moon affiliate! So what does that mean? When you use my affiliate code Quiltinggail2024 at Silly Moon, you will receive 10% off your order and I will receive a small commission.

One who sleeps under a quilt is covered by LOVE!

Happy Quilting!    
Gail