Clover Flower Head Pinds Fine (.45):
I'm pretty particular about my pins for quilting. I only use these:
These are super fine. They are perfect for holding two pieces of quilting cotton together when piecing a quilt, but they do not work well for anything heavy. Don't try using these on a denim quilt, but next time you're sewing hexagons together for a quilt, these are great. Because they are so fine, there is minimal distortion in the pinned fabric. I find my piecing is more accurate when I use them.
Just a couple warnings on these: They hurt when you get poked. They will draw blood. Don't sew over them because your needle can bend or even break them. Sew carefully!
I'll be throwing in a package of these on Friday!
Clover Wonder Clips:
These great clips have been making the rounds on blogs lately. I joined the wonder clip club about eight months ago when I bought a box of 50, and I love them. I use them in place of pins a lot, particularly with heavy projects that are hard to pin.
The only con I've found with these is that they tend to slip just a bit on extra-thick projects like my
messenger bag. Watch out for that while sewing projects like this.
They work great for binding. They are also perfect for keeping seams together when pins could be painful (literally).
I'm throwing in a 10 pack Friday!
Quilting Gloves:
I love my quilting gloves. I realized I own four different pairs. They all look pretty worn. I always wear gloves while quilting my quilts. My hands are naturally quite dry and slip while I'm quilting unless I wear gloves.
My two favorite pairs are the purple and pink ones. The navy pair is from Fons and Porter. The white pair is actually a pair of fruit picking gloves. The packaging was in Japanese I believe so I don't have any more info that that. The pink pair happens to be leather gardening gloves from Target. They are perfect for large quilts and give me really good traction while trying to wrestle with quilts as large as a queen. They are big and bulky and don't work well for smaller quilts. One of the reasons I have so many pairs of gloves for quilting is that some seem to work better than others for certain quilt sizes and even certain fabrics.
The purple gloves are from
Grab-A-Roos. These are perfect for smaller quilts. They fit snugly to my hands and don't add extra bulk. The grippers on the fingers give just the right amount of traction. As you can tell, my pair has been used many times. The kind people at
Grab-A-Roos threw in a couple pairs for Friday! Also,
Christa Quilts carries
Machingers Quilting Gloves in her notions section if you'd like to give that brand a try.