40+ Creative Household Items for Sewing - Unexpected DIY Tools & Sewing Hacks!

Hi everyone, Angela here. In this video I'll show you some everyday household items and other things that you just might have that you can use in your sewing room. I'll leave links for most of these items down in the description. Use any kind of small adhesive hook to put on the side of your machine to hold your clippers. A silicon baby bib can easily be put under your machine to use as storage or as a thread catcher. Use a makeup palette holder to store your templates and rulers if you're short on wall space. I originally made a video about this adhesive towel holder about three years ago to use it as a zipper jig. Simply drop in the zipper pull face down and then pull the tape through with the wrong side up. They're also useful for storing smaller scissors. If you don't have one of these magnetic seam guides to help you sew straight you can use mounting tape. This tape has a nice thickness. Just cut a couple of inches and then double it up to get a nice thick edge. If you find it a bit difficult to sew skinny straps straight just put tape on both sides. You can do the same with little straight magnets and protective furniture pads. These little pads are also great for holding your needles. These take away or take out chopsticks make really good bodkins to thread in your elastic or your flat cords. This is my little teflon pressing cloth. It's strong non-stick and see-through. I use it as a general pressing cloth but especially when I want to protect my iron and ironing board from fusible glues. If you have any of these oven and grill guard sheets you can use these as well as they're literally the same thing just in a much larger sheet. This is a point turner. I just find that it's a little bit too pointy and can easily poke through certain fabrics. Instead you can use different size knitting needles as they're a little bit rounder at the point. These double pointed knitting needles can be taped to a table so if you have a lot of corners to push out both your hands are free to pull on the fabric. For projects that I needed to trim the batting really close to the seam I used to use my small template with the silicon grips on one side. Push the fabric with the edge of the template. Carefully flip it over adjusting it so just a little bit of the batting is showing from the seam. Then carefully trim away. Some things I find that work even better are one, this scale ruler. The tapered edges slide easily underneath the fabric and when you flip it over it safely covers up all the fabric and stays in place. Two, a length of aluminum angle. The piece I have here is about 1 16th of an inch or 1.6 millimeters thick and 5 eighths of an inch or 16 millimeters wide. Again it slides under the fabric easily and safely covers all of it. Three, if you have a ruler with an angled edge like this one you can easily slide the lower edge underneath the fabric and the angle will cover the seam. This is my chunky seam ripper that has a rubbery end at the top. You can unpick stitches like this or turn it over so that the little red ball is on the bottom and carefully rip out seams like this. You then use that top end to rub and clean off the thread. To be honest I rarely ever use a seam ripper. Instead I use single edge razor blades. Once you get the hang of it it's just so much faster. I've used it to unpick everything from jeans to wedding gowns. If you have silicon spatulas with thin edges like these jar spatulas they'll easily grab and clean away the threads. I mainly use a lint roller to do this job. These are stick-on template grips. They're round with a little circle in the middle. They're placed on the back of your template so that it doesn't slide around when you're cutting your fabric. Some templates already have a rough surface on the back to keep it from slipping. This is micropore surgical tape. When put on the back of a template it works really well to grip the fabric. What's also nice is that it's see-through and I can see the markings a bit better. If you need to press open the seam of a tube and you don't want to create creases on the sides just put a rolling pin in between. What's even better if you can get it is a piece of hand rail. It has that nice round top and a flat bottom. When you're done pressing you can also use it as a clapper. For smaller tubes this was a suggestion from one of my viewers. Cut and sew some batting to fit around a small ruler. With the padded sides you won't get any creases when you press it. These are sewing and quilting clips. These laundry clips with the silicon pads also work really well. Use slap bracelets to store your rolls. This is a Christmas light holder that you can easily use to store your cording. Cable tape which is basically double-sided hook and loop tape or velcro is also really handy for storage. These inexpensive cutting boards are nice and sturdy to use as pattern templates and also big enough to use as the base for the bottom of bags. If you cut a small rectangle with a narrow slit down the center, round out all the corners, you have yourself a nifty little pleat maker. If you're finding this video useful make sure to like, share, subscribe and turn on all notifications. You can also use a fork for smaller pleats and these hair combs for bigger ones. Easily cut down and customize the comb to the size you need. This next little hack I saw on a channel called Fierce Kittens. Make sure to check out her channel because she's really awesome. To easily match seams on vinyl, use a handheld plier stapler to staple just inside the seam allowance. You don't have to worry about breaking a needle because the staple is just to the right of the seam. I can easily remove these small staples with my bent nose pliers. If you no longer use your IKEA plastic bag dispenser, you can use it to store your vinyl rolls either in the center or across the openings. This is a telescopic magnetic pickup tool. Use it when you don't want to bend down to pick up those pins before you vacuum. You can use clear tubing to store your bobbins. Just cut a short length then cut away about quarter of an inch from the center. Place the bobbins inside about an inch apart. Cut small pieces of a skinnier hose to use as bobbin clips. This will help keep the threads from unraveling. This will also work for small spools of thread. Use clear shallow food containers for zipper tape storage. Measure the width of the zipper, drill two holes and then cut down each side to make an opening. On the other side, drill a hole only at the top, then cut down both sides, cut a bit away at the top and round out the sharp corners. Put in the zip tape, thread it through the hole, pull out the desired length and cut, then secure the end on the other side. You can cut nice and straight with a length of aluminum channel. I add mounting tape on the bottom and then double-sided tape on the inside without removing the plastic. This creates a nice smooth surface for the scissors to glide on. When done, you can just cover up the mounting tape again and put away. Here I have hemostats with both curved and straight tips. Both have various levels of tension. These are great if you need to thread your serger or overlocker as the thread will not come loose. Use them to go in to grab a corner and turn a project right side out, and then you can use the tip to poke out any corners. If you're using larger cones of thread, you may need a thread stand like this. You can easily make your own, you just need a mug, strong rubber bands at the top and bottom of it, insert a ruler and a little bulldog clip at the top. Here I have some tube turners. They're basically just narrow tubes in different sizes with skinnier sticks that go in between. You can use any type of smooth tube to do the job. Here I got these tubes from the garden section of my hardware store. To turn a tube, have one of the ends sewn closed, insert the tube all the way to the end, and then push the fabric through with the narrower tube or stick. Push out the corners for a strap, or just cut across the end. My favorite way to turn a tube is with this type of paper towel holder. Simply turn the top of the tube over about an inch and pull down. Make sure to let me know down in the comments what some of your favorite sewing hacks are. On my table underneath my cutting mat, I have a thin piece of sheet metal that I had cut to size. To use as pattern weights, I took these edge guide magnets and attached crystal doorknobs to them. These magnets are really strong. They easily hold down my paper patterns and even keep my cardboard patterns in place. These are hem markers. They're used to help you measure a hem length evenly from the floor. Slide the top piece to the desired length and just squeeze to get a chalk line onto the garment. First I determine where the finished hem length will be, then I decide what type of hem I'll finish it with and allow for the extra fabric I need for that. So this line will be my cutting line and I won't have any other chalk to clean off. The chalk works really well on colors but not so great on whites. You can barely see the chalk mark so you'd have to pin it or re-mark it all around. If you do clothing alterations, this is just a big waste of time. What you can do is take one of these strong two inch clamps and place the flat side onto the floor. Insert a yardstick so that it's upright. Take a vanishing ink pen and insert it into a bulldog clip and then wrap an elastic band all around so that the pen stays in place and the clip can still be squeezed. Place it onto the yardstick and carefully make marks all around. You can even carefully slide it to draw a solid line. I hope you enjoyed these little hacks. Thanks again for watching, take care and see you in the next video.