5 New-To-Me Sewing Notions

Hey, friends! I asked for a few new little sewing tools for Christmas and my husband came through and put some of them in my Christmas stocking. I took some time yesterday to film a video describing them and demonstrating these five new-to-me sewing notions and today I’ll share them here too.

If you’re looking for a few new toys to add to your sewing room, maybe this will give you some ideas and I bet they’re things you may not already have. There are always more sewing notions to check out, but it’s hard to know if they’re really be useful, or if you’re better off sticking with your tried and true methods, so I’ve tried these things, and while there are a few I already love, there are a couple more that they jury is still out on.

So here we go!

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Five New Sewing Notions I Got for Christmas

Sure Grips

First is one I am really, really loving! I’m very excited about these little dots! Sure Grips are little silicone dots that you apply to the bottom of your cutting rulers so they don’t slide when you’re cutting with your rotary cutter. I have needed these for a long time and now I’m just mad I waited because they are awesome. I used to have to bare down pretty hard to make sure my ruler didn’t move on me, but now it’s so easy to hold. Love these, I highly recommend.

Also mentioned in the video is my favorite brand of cutting rulers, called O’Lipfa. I have some other brands, but my two O’Lipfa rulers are always my go-to, I just like them better. I really need to replace my ruler with a lip, I’ve had it for sooooo long and some of the lines have worn off.

1/4” Seam Tape

This diagonal seam tape is useful for sewing half square triangles for quilting. You stick it to your machine (it’s like washi or masking tape, it comes right off without residue) and use it as a guide for your half square triangles so that you don’t have to draw pencil lines. I tried it and there was a learning curve, but I got the hang of it and it was fine. But, it will really only work for smaller squares unless you have an extension table, which I don’t. The video has a clip of me using it so you can see what I mean.

However, I kept the tape in place for sewing small squares together and found it was very helpful for keeping a perfect 1/4” seam allowance on a mini quilt I’m working on. My machine doesn’t have a very good marking on the presser foot for 1/4”, so I did really like this tape for that and that’s how I’ll probably use it going forward.

Drawstring Threaders

I got these out and played with them, but I haven’t yet used them to insert elastic or drawstrings. We’ll see. I’m actually not to hopeful that these will make a huge difference for me, as I’ve been using the safety pin method my entire life, but if they do happen to surprise me and be very useful, I’ll report back.

These came with minimal instructions, but they also included some cool tweezer-like tools that might be handy for certain tasks.

Seam Guide Presser Foot

This is another one I know I’ll love having! I use an older semi industrial machine for quilting and to get perfect lines 1” apart, say, I have to tape a chopstick to my machine as a guide. This little presser foot solves that problem for me! I can use this presser foot to sew lines up to 1” apart, but I was told by a YouTube commenter that a foot might exist that goes out up to 2”, so I’ll definitely be looking for that too. Mine is Pfaff specific, but here is a snap on one that’s more universal.

Magnetic Seam Guides

These are a little gadget I have seen used by others on Instagram, so I thought I’d try them out. This little seam guide magnetizes to the throat place of your sewing machine and keeps your seam on track. I think it would be handy for certain projects, like my little drawstring pouch, where you have to sew three lines of stitching around your circle, an inch of more from the edge.

It would also be helpful when teaching kids or for beginners, to help them keep their seam allowances straight. I haven’t used it yet, but if it turns out to be something I love, I’ll let you know!

Did you get any new sewing tools for Christmas? I’m always excited to hear about new gadgets that could be useful!

Cheers :)

Nikki