Quilting and Sewing Tips and Techniques

Hi, I'm Kelly Pederson Hanson. I'm Aurora Sisneros. And today, we've come to you to teach you a little bit about some of our tips, tricks, and favorites. The things we can't live without in our studios. Absolutely.

What's one of your favorites, Aurora? I think my favorite thing, as far as garment sewing, is probably a good pair of sharp shears. I use a rotary cutter a lot of times when I'm doing straight lines. I know that that's a very popular thing in quilting. But when you have to follow curves a lot, when you're doing patterns and you have to mark notches and things like that, there's nothing better than a sharp pair of scissors.

And I will tell you that I have threatened everyone in my household, they are not allowed to use these for anything but fabric under penalty of death. Oh, this is wonderful. I see that you have one of my tips. You mark your materials that you bring to class and you bring to retreats or whatever else you do. So that way, you know that you go home with your own scissors.

Exactly. One of my handy dandy favorites is this organizer. Wow, that's beautiful. I know! I get to carry all of my scissors and my little snippers.

I have everything that I could possibly need if I'm leaving home. That's excellent. So an organizer to stay, now, I just have everything in a drawer at home, because I never travel, but this is a phenomenal way to keep track of all your little things. Well, actually, this is my doubles. These are the doubles that I always have packed, so if I ever have to take off- Yes, for a retreat or a show, I have everything I need here, I have my pins.

And the nicest part about it is, on the opposite side, there's this place to have all of my rulers. Oh yeah, look at that. So everything fits just snugly in. I've got my little pins that I might need for basting or whatever. That's great.

Yeah, isn't that fun? I have a way I like to organize, too. Of course, it's an excuse just to make another project. Like I really need one. But I have all of these cute little...

It's an excuse to make something pretty, but then you can keep all of your, you know, little sewing tools in there. And you know, if I'm doing a hand work piece, or you know, I'm doing a little bit of quilting, or I'm doing a little bit embroidery to embellish, you know I can tuck my little piece in here. You know, I've got bigger bags here too that are a little bit larger size, that I can hold larger handwork pieces in. So, you know, some are for my tools and some are for the projects that I'm working on, and it gives me an excuse to make something that is really adorable. Well, this one doesn't have anything in it.

But one thing I really enjoy about this one is look at the little clasp that she's got on there. So you can just like clip it onto your purse, or... Or onto your stroller or something. Right! Or you can clip a couple of these together.

Exactly. That is really slick. Makes it really enjoyable to find your tools, too. I noticed that one of them has got a really neat little opening. I have one that's got the same type of an opening.

Oh yeah, look at that! Yeah. Isn't that sweet? So, this one was made for me. This one was made for me, too.

That's too funny. Girlfriend! All right. Well, what you don't know is that inside here is a tape measure and that's what gives it the little... going back to itself, snapping right back.

I love it, I love it. Now, What do you keep in there? I keep a little travel iron in there. Oh my goodness, how cute is that guy? It's really sweet.

And that's the way that you put the cord together. So that way you don't have that spare cord, and it's got a little spout. That is too cute. Yes! For the water for the stage.

It's awesome. That is very adorable. You could turn it off and on of course by this. And if it's sitting up, it's always on. That's the only thing you have to worry about.

Yeah. So it just fits really nicely in here. That's adorable. Now, I'm sorry, I have to ask you, you have a pair of binoculars on the table. What on earth are those for?

Well, you know, you never know when you're going to find a handsome man when you're out and about- I know, to spy on? Yes, , no actually, these are great if you are working on a quilt project on your table, you don't want to look through the part that you normally would look through, so it magnifies. What you want to do is you want to look through the part that... the larger lens. And if you look down, what happens is if you want to look through there, you see smaller.

Oh, yeah! You see it smaller, so you can actually see how your colors are going together. It's really neat. Another way to do that is take a picture with your cell phone, and then look at the picture and you can see if you're going to like the color way that it's gone. That's amazing.

That's pretty smart. Oh my snips, so these are, these are little snips and I find these wonderful, these guys are a little bit cumbersome for clipping threads off the ends of things. And I keep these near me with also a cute little bag, that kind of a pin cushion with a bag attached that hangs off of your sewing table. So you can clip all the threads as you go instead of waiting till the end to try to find them all. Especially if you're doing a larger project.

So you can clip all of your ends with these cute little guys. And they're great too, because they have a hinge here. Now, when you're looking for a pair of expensive scissors please make sure that they have a hinge right here. Like I'm showing you right there. That means that they can come apart, and you can take them to your local fabric store on scissor sharpening day and get them sharpened.

But these, I just can't live without. That is a great point, because so often we go and we buy these very expensive scissors and they don't have that. And then you're stuck. Yeah, you can't sharpen them. Once it's dull, it's dull.

They'll say they're titanium, it doesn't matter. They get dull. Yeah, exactly. This is a really cool thing. You know what it's for?

For washing dishes, it looks like to me. Scotch-Brite, so funny. There's so many different kinds. You can buy them at the dollar store, whatever. You use them to take all of the threads off of your table, or off of your cutting mat.

It cleans up the cutting mat. Because we have self-healing cutting mats. Yeah. And you know, what's funny, I use something similar to this when I get gunk on my iron. When we're doing projects like these, where they have some very stiff interfacing in them, it's fusible interfacing.

So we're constantly gluing fusible interfacing to fabric. And I won't lie, sometimes I turn it the wrong direction and I fuse my... The fusible to the iron, and then I have to peel it off, and then it leaves an icky residue. And so something like this will really scratch off that surface to clean your iron, too. Great idea.

Well, I also have Elmer's Glue Stick. Okay, what is this for? Do you want to guess? Um, it is to spread on your hand when you're doing applique so that you can peel it off in a hand formation. That's what I used my Elmer's Glue for.

Oh, really? Yeah, is that not right? What we're going to be using this for, is when you're piecing fabric together. If you have seams and they butt up next to each other, and they lock in place because the seams are... One seam might be that way, and one seam might be this way.

So they just lock in place. Put a little piece of that glue in there, and then you put them in place and it holds it while you're sewing. That makes sense. And Elmer's glue is washable, too. So it'll just come right out.

Absolutely. It is a great trick if you don't like using needles. Because you know, when you use pins and needles you often stand the risk of damaging your machine. That's true, that's very true. So, have you...

what do you have there? Now, this seems like an office supply type of thing. And of course it is. I just got it at an office supply store. But I...

when we do bags, a lot of times we sew with things like Peltex, and we do really thick projects where we have a lot of layers, it's really difficult to sew through a lot of layers and you end up bending a lot of your pins or beheading them, which is what I call them when you're jamming on the end of the pin. And then it comes off and you're just ruining pins. So, these little binder clips are great to clip a lot of thick layers together so that you can steady them when you put them under your machine. So when I sew with oil cloth, I pretty much never use pins if I can help it. I'm always using binder clips, or even paper clips.

They work really well to hold several layers of stiff fabrics together, too. Yeah, they're fantastic. Last thing that I have to show you, it's just a little graph book and the graph book is wonderful because what you can do is make your designs in there. You can also, you know, try and figure out how you're going to quilt around or you can have little notes for yourself, or if you have a customer, or you're even having problems yourself with designing a quilt, you can use the graph squares to be able to help you with the designing process. That's great for taking notes for yourself as you're in the car, or if you're just driving someplace and you're waiting for somebody.

You can play a little bit in that graph book. So that is my go-to as well. Very good. Well, I've hoped that some of these tips will help you guys, you know be more efficient in your sewing career or in your quilting career as well. Absolutely, it did with me.

Yeah, me too. Have a great night.