happy turkey day!

v and i are spending the holiday in wine country with our good friends colin & christina. the boys are outside chopping wood and smoking the turkey while christina and i are inside monitoring this situation:

love aunt maggie | fitz and honey badger

today i'm going to share ten sewing tools sewing tools I'm thankful for. nine are small enough to fit in the palm of your hand!

ball point needles

being able to sew knits is a total game changer. once you can do that you can really do anything. i've found that ball point needles are the key to success in this endeavor.

automatic button hole foot

the first time i attempted buttons with the duggar dresses it was a disaster, as was the second time with maya's sunday brunch jacket. after that i wizened up and started using snaps whenever the pattern called for buttons. (something still do for lots of patterns as snaps are so much more kid friendly.)

then I got my janome and it had an automatic button hole foot. so i tried buttons once more with maya's power clashing dress...

not perfect, but suddenly it was a one possession game.

pin cushion bracelet

love this. my mom bought it for me years ago at the village pharmacy and it is beyond useful. if only fitzy wasn't so obsessed with it.

stamps & fabric ink

oh man best $16 I ever spent. not only do these tools allow me to make my signature labels,

but they also allow me to make all sorts of fun things for my sewing like this card for a recent gift:

why do I even put victor's name on there? the extent of his involvement was texting his buddy for their address

bias tape makers

I bought these at the going out of business sale for a boston sewing shop. I didn't know how useful they would be, but now I can't imagine life without them. I mean who doesn't love bias bound seams? here they are in the farmers market jacket:

love aunt maggie | farmers market jacket

a good seam ripper

seam rippers are like spank: everyone benefits from them but we don't talk about it. well for one moment i would like to acknowledge my seam ripper and appreciate how many mistakes it has helped me fix.

needle nose pliers

so here is the thing with snaps. they sell these pricey snap setters that are supposed to be the only way one can attach snaps. this is total bs.

i had one of those and it was hard to use and i would frequently mess up. then I had to grab my pliers, pry the mangled snap out, and start over with a new snap. one day i just tried using my pliers to attach the snap. sure it took a minute longer but oh my god it worked! with the control and precision of doing it 'by hand' I was able to get it right on the first try.

i've used needle nose pliers for every snap i've set since. and vic has learned this tool gets kept with my sewing supplies right with the pinking shears.

snippers

is that what these are called? i don't know but i finish every project by going through it and making sure I've gotten all tiny threads. even though I use the automatic thread clipper on my machine i'm amazing how many i find. also you can take them on planes so they are part of my travel sewing kit.

an honest to god point turner

patterns often say "flip right side out and smooth with a knitting needle, point turner, or chopstick." no use a point turner people. chopsticks are worthless, knitting needles stretch and distort the fabric, point turners turn points.

needle & thread

okay if i haven't already outed myself as an old fashioned hipster (a la portlandia) then this should do it. but in all honesty you do get better results when you do things by hand sometime. i fully extol the virtues of hand sewing here.