Quequechan Quilter - 1 March 2025

Hello everyone!

Being ill put me another week behind and all I found time to do was catch up on things around the house. No time for sewing.

Anyway, as I didn't have the time to get into my sewing room, I thought I'd share some of my favorite notions. Here's a photo of the things I use most often when I'm sewing.

Favorite Notions

Left to right, from the top:

•  5 lb. weight
• 505 basting spray
• lint brush
• corner turner/pressing tool
• chacoliner marker
• 25mm rotary cutter
• 45 mm rotary cutter
• 60 mm rotary cutter
• applique scissors
• thread snips
• Sewline glue pen
• air erase marker
• stiletto
• seam ripper

The weight comes in handy when cutting longer pieces of fabric as it helps to keep my ruler in place.  The small loop lint brush is great for cleaning my cutting boards, my sewing area, and my clothes. An air erase marker and chacoliner work well for marking almost everything. 

All three sizes of rotary cutters are great to have. I most frequently use the 60 mm, but the 45 is great for cutting smaller amounts of fabric, and the 25mm is perfect for cutting curves.  The applique scissors are very helpful for trimming off "dog ears" and cutting down to 1/4" on stitch-and-flips.  The snips were originally intended for use with machine embroidery as the fit under the darning foot easily when snipping threads.  I use them constantly for trimming threads on blocks in progress, snipping thread ends, chain piecing, and they don't aggravate my arthritis as they are spring action.  Not much pressure needed.

Sewline's glue pen is very useful when sewing with smaller pieces.  Pins tend to get in the way and distort things, so I find using a small dab of glue to hold pieces for sewing works really well.  A good stiletto is always useful for guiding fabric through the feed dogs, and I have several good seam rippers for those times when a seam doesn't stitch as straight you need it to or you find you've put a piece in the wrong position in your block.

The 505 spray is usefull for basting quilting projects indoors.  Especially with my breathing issues as it has nothing in it to aggravate them.

I'm hoping to finally finish the Valentime pillow covers this week and start a couple for St. Patricks Day.  I'll make sure to keep those a lot simpler.

Have a fun week quilting,

Virginia