Quilting Tools You Can’t Live Without

. If you've been a quilter for very long, you know that new tools and gadgets are coming out all the time. And some of them are really fabulous and I always have an open mind plus of course it's always fun to get something new. But I know I just don't have room for all of the gizmos and gadgets and rulers and everything. And over the years, I've given a lot of them away because I find I just don't use them. But I wanted to share with you the things that I love and just can't live without. So some of these are kind of old and a little beat up, but I still love them. So starting with this, this is my, it's very old and you can see it's all scratched. This is my magnetic pin cushion. I love it because I can throw things. I'll be sewing along and I'll just kinda throw a pin in the general direction and I know it's gonna land there. And I love these pins. Now these are the ones this are the plastic heads. And I know that some people like prefer the glass head because it won't melt, but I love the plastic heads. I don't know why it just, it's more tactile or easier for me to pull something like that and I like the size, cause it's easy to pull these out so these are my favorite pink cushion and pins. Thread, how can we not love thread. This is aurofil. I love aurofil because it's really thin and when you're piecing it, it just disappears but it's also really strong. So this is the one that I ended up falling in love with, but I'm not saying there aren't other great threads this is just my favorite. An awl it's so important when I'm trying to guide things under the presser foot and the needle and I don't wanna get myself. That's what I use. I use an awl and it's handy for all kinds of things. Even pulling a few stitches out or kind of flattening something when you're doing applique so an awl. These are my snips when I'm sewing and you have threads upon threads, I just snip them away. And sometimes I'll just put them on a shoelace and put them around my neck and do it that way. These are my big fiskars scissors. This was something I treated myself to. These are titanium blades and they are, they've just stayed sharp forever. And I liked the fact that they're spring loaded cause I have arthritis in my hands and it's just, they just make life easy. This is my favorite thimble of all time. I do a lot of hand work and this is it's been around forever. It's got a little metal tip in there. It's got room for your fingernails. If you ever get long fingernails, which I don't seem to be able to do. And then I have, this is my the rotary cutter I use all the time. It's ergonomically, correct. It can be used left or right handed. It just is my favorite for some reason, this is the one that works for me. And then this is also incredibly handy. This is the rotary cutter with the really big blade and like it, if I'm cutting eight layers at a time, which I do sometimes, even though maybe you're not supposed to, but you can. I use this cause it just goes through those multiple layers really easily and it's also good for things like flannel and fleece Anyway I was really glad when this came out. Rulers, okay well I have a good zillion rulers, but I find that I keep going back to the same ones and these are the ones. These are the Creative Grids. I hope you can see that creative grid rulers. And on the back they have like these little dots of texture. And what that does is it keeps the ruler from sliding around on your fabric. And I also find them really easy to see through. I have some rulers that have different colors instead of the black markings, they have different colors or a lot more lines. And I find those hard to see through, but these are my favorites. So Creative Grids and I like that they don't slip. This is an Add-An-Eighth ruler. And its big sister is the Add-A-Quarter ruler. This is what I use when I'm doing paper piecing, you know foundation piecing. I just love these because you don't have to try and get the right thing. You just snug it up. It's got this little lip back here and you snug it up against that siemens zip you're good. So I love those. And then this little guy here, the quilters cut and press, there are a lot of different versions of this. And I think they're all pretty good. This is the one I like. You can cut on this side and iron on this side and speaking of irons, this is my little rowenta travel iron. It gets so hot, it's so hot, it's dangerous. But, it's just the coolest little thing because it's handle folds down like that and you can, it comes in a little case. It takes up no room and it's super hot. Plus you can steam with it vertically. So if you're traveling and you're trying to get the wrinkles out, it's a fabulous thing. This, you're wondering why. Well if you've ever ironed fabric for a quilt that you're gonna cut out and then you're trying to put them down and not let them get wrinkled everything else, it can be a real problem I love these cause I can put several fabrics on one of these. I can load couple of them and hang them and that way they don't get wrinkled again right after I've ironed them so I love these. There are several different types. My glasses, these are my, buy them at the grocery store, the drug store, little cheater glasses, without which life is dangerous. And then this is a tin. Now the tin I just got lucky. This is something when your kids have one of those fundraisers at school, I ended up buying that tin. But the cool thing is that this tin is exact right size for my bobbin holders. And I love these things. These rings they're the best. I can see everything. And I'm lucky to have this too, but I have indulged myself. I buy a lot of bobbins and fill them up so my goal is to have one for every single piece, every single spool of thread I have. So they're already waiting for me. And finally I have this little guy. This is a bobbin and oops! Bobbin winder. And if you've never tried one I recommend you give it a shot. You put your spool here, winds round and you press the button and it went to that and what that does is it takes keeps, your machine from doing a lot of work because when it's spinning that bobbin and it's moving really hard. Think how many of those you whined. So I love this guy plus I can just do a whole bunch at a time without having to do the whole thing through the machine and then undo it and everything else. So that's the last one I have to share with you. And as I say these are my favorites. I'm sure you have some too. You might wanna give one of mine a try.