Sewing is great – at least most of the time. But occasionally, little annoyances that are difficult to deal with pop up. Even if it’s small, something throwing you off your rhythm can disrupt you while you’re working. You need some excellent sewing hacks in your arsenal to feel better about sewing.
These are just a few ideas for different ways that you might be able to make your sewing life a little bit easier. These hacks cover many of the more difficult things that can come up while you’re sewing, and implementing even one can make your sewing projects much smoother.
Bonus tip: Handmade items can still benefit from machinery. For example, if you often add beautiful embroidered designs to your projects but struggle with the time constraint, consider investing in machine embroidery.
6 Sewing Hacks You Need to Try
Whether you have trouble in the actual process of sewing or have issues figuring out what you need to be doing, this will help. It’s best to figure out which sewing hack you think will be the most helpful and start there. Once you’ve got one down, you should keep going. The more you can implement, the more you’ll be able to streamline things. Even if you don’t think all these will be useful, you should try them out at least.
1) Spray Your Needle
The first thing that comes to most people’s minds when they hear the words “sewing” and “annoying” in the same sentence is: threading the needle.
Threading a needle is always a little pain unless you’re working on a machine with an automatic threader. Even then, there are occasional catches that are more frustrating than they should be. We’ve all had those times when we’re trying to thread a needle and… can’t… get it done.
If you want to avoid that, then hairspray is the name of the game. Spray your needle with a little hairspray before you thread it, and you’ll discover something magical: the thread will go right through. If you don’t get it on the first try, spray the first bit of the thread. Doing this will make things slip a bit more and allow the thread to find the hole.
2) Bagging Perfect Ruffles
Do you know what else can be frustrating? Trying to ruffle your fabric. Ruffling isn’t necessarily difficult. We all know a technique that works for us and is usually pretty easy to do. What is difficult, though, is getting the ruffles to look right. The only thing more frustrating than not being able to ruffle fabric is not being able to make them look how we want them.
Run a zig-zag thread through the top of your fabric to stop that frustration. Make it tight initially, but leave some loose thread at the end. When you’re done, pull the fabric. Doing this should ruffle the material, and you can pull more or give it room to get the ruffles where you want them. When you’re done, cut the loose thread and sew it down. Now, your ruffles are perfect.
3) Always Iron a Straight Line
The best way to always get a straight iron line is to have a quality sewing iron. If you can’t get that, you have a reliable backup option. Ironing is a bit tricky even with this hack, but this will help you quite a bit. If your iron is getting hot, you must start using this hack.
The first thing you will need is a ruler, and the second is a piece of fabric you need to iron. The third is a nice flat surface – preferably an ironing board, but we can’t all be perfect. Put your material onto the flat surface and align the ruler where you want to iron. Press the fabric tight so the area is flat with the ruler, then move the ruler to the edge. Press your iron to the structure, and gently pull the ruler out. (A metal ruler would be preferred.)
This hack isn’t perfect, but it can be a lot of help. Still, merely having a great iron and knowing how to use it can be a lot more important.
4) Use Clips to Keep Things Straight
Are you having trouble securing your fabric? Turn to one of the best DIY tools you can have: binder clips. Stick the clip to the material and your work surface, and it’s like you have an extra hand to help. Keeping your material straight can be harder than it seems, and unless you have someone to help, binder clips should be your absolute best friend.
5) Graph Paper
Ideas are a beautiful thing to have, aren’t they? If you always have sewing ideas and fashion design ideas, you are blessed with your creativity. But many of us are also cursed when figuring out how to make those ideas work. Sketchbooks are great, but sometimes what we wrote down and what we ended up doing don’t align.
If you’re having this problem, consider picking up a book of graph paper. It’s not just for engineers. You can use graph papers to get a better and more exact measurement on your sketchbook so that your ideas will immediately translate to great projects.
6) Keep Your Scissors As Sharp As Possible
This is more advice than a hack, but it’s still essential. If you’re having issues cutting fabric, it isn’t because the material is invincible. It’s probably because your scissors are very vincible. You can sharpen your scissors using a knife sharpener or a similar tool if you need to.
The real hack is to keep a pair of scissors around just for fabric. The real issue comes when you try to cut open a box, then a food container, then your material. Those are 6 of the best sewing hacks that you should be using. It would be best if you tried these because they make sewing so much more enjoyable.