cargo cult craft

In the pantheon of dubious truisms, one of the most pernicious must be “It’s a poor workman who blames his tools”. I have never heard this said in any environment where the tools provided weren’t complete crap.

Looking back, I feel like I spent much of my childhood wrestling with shoddy tools. Probably the worst culprits were left-handed school scissors. Other southpaws may remember them: sticky-hinged, rusty, blunt-bladed and with handles that bit into your knuckles. They were so abysmal I eventually gave up and learned to cut right-handed. They also taught me the absolute futility of common ownership of tools. To this day, hands off my Ginghers if you know what’s good for you.

I fell in love with good tools the first time I ever used a properly sharpened chef’s knife, the kind you only have to stroke over the skin of a tomato for it to part like tearing silk. Using it instantly transformed meal preparation from drudgery into flow — a state of pleasurable absorption in which time no longer mattered. I wonder how many people think they don’t like cooking merely because most of their time in the kitchen is spent fighting against blunt knives, flimsy pans and dead stove sparkers.

Similarly, I spent my first couple of years as a home seamstress thinking I had no natural ability because I found it fiendishly difficult to achieve passable results even on seemingly simple projects. It was only later that I discovered many of my difficulties were due in large part to substandard tools — cheap plastic sewing machines, blunt shears, the wrong size needles, flimsy thread. Once I upgraded to good-quality tools, these difficulties vanished. (Which was a relief, but also meant I now had only my own ineptitude to blame when things went wrong.)

The Frister and Rossman Destiny, tool of the devil.

Sewing has a lot in common with cooking in that it requires specialized tools which might only get used a few times a year but for which there are no effective substitutes. A meal in the making can grind to a halt for lack of a grater or roasting pan; a beautiful dress can wind up in the Pile of Shame for lack of silk pins or a bias tape maker. I think this puts a lot of would-be sewers off, and I must admit that equipping a sewing room can hoover up a lot of money and time. But those of us who are even semi-serious about making our own food don’t scruple to equip our kitchens with electric mixers and turkey basters and citrus zesters, so why should we bridle at the idea of tailor’s hams, loop turners or pinking shears?

On the bright side, the tool-intensive nature of sewing gives it an element of magpie glee. You can always make an excuse to stop into a craft shop because there is always going to be something useful in there, usually at the pleasantly justifiable cost of £10 or less. Utilitarian shinies: the best of both worlds.

There are as many sewing setups as there are people who sew. I thought I’d give you a peek into mine. Here’s my sewing room, aka Atelier Catbox. Theoretically, this was meant to be a joint project room, but my sewing and I have almost completely annexed it. (Sorry, James! You snooze, you lose!) I probably should have prettied it up before taking the photo, but this at least gives you an accurate idea of what it looks like after I’ve finished a project: yes, like a cyclone hit it. Craft Rooms it’s not, but it is a happy mess.

Click through for the annoted image.

And here are some of the tools I use.

Measuring and cutting

Top to bottom: PatternMaster, Sew Easy French curve and quilter's ruler; rotary cutter, pinking shears, Gingher dressmaking shears, thread clipper, snips; sewing gauges. And measuring tape, obviously.

I mostly cut out garment pieces with shears on my living room floor, saving the rotary cutter for straight edges or small pieces, because it’s tedious trying to cut out anything larger than the cutting mat with a rotary cutter — you have to shift the mat underneath fabric and pattern, which invariably rucks everything up. The 24-inch quilters’ ruler is very useful, as it’s gridded and includes angle guides for cutting on the true bias, but I suspect it’s not 100% accurate. The Sew-Easy French curve I can’t honestly recommend for drafting — the edges feel like they’ve been hacked out with a handsaw. The PatternMaster is more useful and accurate, and comes in metric and imperial. The Fiskars snips (with gray and black handle) are excellent for clipping curves and snipping notches into seam allowances.

Pressing

Foreground to background: Sleeve board with cotton lawn and silk organza press cloths; tailor's ham; point presser/clapper; travel iron for small surfaces; spray bottle; iron with Teflon plate; feline assistant.

Pressing is a huge part of sewing, which is ironic (see what I did there?) because I have always avoided it whenever possible. I have a lot of pressing equipment, and I have to admit, grudgingly, that it makes all the difference. Sleeve boards and tailor’s hams are the kind of thing many sewers put off buying, but they are extremely useful for achieving better finish on garments. A tailor’s ham, for instance, can cure the Pointy Nipple Syndrome caused by bust darts. The spray bottle is for pressing linen or wetting press cloths; I don’t use steam from the iron very often as it’s hard to control. When I do, I fill my iron with bottled water because London tap water is so hard it can bork an iron completely within 6 months, turning it into a spluttering, limescale-spitting demon.

Marking

At left: Clover tracing wheel for use with carbon paper. Top to bottom: Hera, fine-point water-soluble marker, Chakoner chalk wheel, Sewline erasable marking pencil.

Different projects require different marking tools. The Chakoner chalk marker is probably one of the most useful sewing gadgets I own. About the same size as tailor’s chalk but much more accurate, it’s heart-shaped, refillable and fits easily in the hand, drawing a very fine line of powdered chalk using a rotating wheel. The chalk brushes off (usually). The Sewline pencil is a close second to the Chakoner; it handles like a mechanical pencil and the marks can be erased either with the eraser or with plain water.

Sewing

Bernina 830 in Horn cabinet, found on eBay. Cabinet open, sewing machine in operating position.

Cabinet closed, sewing machine lowered and stowed.

My knees literally went weak when I found this on eBay after eight months of waiting. The machine was a classic model I knew and loved, refurbished to near-mint condition. The cabinet had an airlift to raise and lower the machine, a custom insert for flatbed sewing and innumerable trays and drawers for notions. When I won the auction for just over half my maximum bid, I ran up and down the flat squealing. When the buildings across the road caught fire and we had to evacuate the house, it was harder to leave the Bernina than to leave the cat. It is my baby. (Sorry, Audrey.)

Some favorite gadgets:

Wrist pincushion

Why do I feel instantly more competent when I put this on? Who cares. No more groping for pins at a crucial moment. Constantly useful.

Scissors onna chain

Where are my scissors? James, did you take my scissors? I just had them. Goddammit, you put something down for one second in this house and… I already looked there. Are you sitting on them? Where the hell are they? Now I’m going to have to get off the couch and — oh, here they are. On this chain around my neck.

Fine point tweezers and seam ripper

Needle-nose tweezers. Good for pulling every last stray thread out of that seam you screwed up and had to unpick.

Vintage Singer hem marker

Menfolk like to pretend they don’t know how to use pins. If you haven’t got a reliable sewing buddy, here’s a good way to mark your hems accurately yourself. Adjust the red thingy to desired hem height on ruler, hold rubber bulb in hand, stand in front of marker and turn slowly in a complete circle, squeezing at intervals. The red thingy will puff a line of powdered chalk all the way around your skirt to mark your hemline. Sorted. (Avoid the Dritz/Prym hem marker as it is worse than useless.)

Simflex expandable gauge

If, like me, you are crap at getting buttonholes, tucks and pleats evenly spaced, you need one of these. It expands like an accordion to allow perfectly even marking. Watch out for pinched fingers.

The humble thimble

When I slip this on and pick up my needle, I feel like I’m taking my place among the billions of women, most of them nameless, who have stitched their way through the course of human history. Thimbles are sturdy, practical and utterly feminine. There are worse things to be.

Tell me about your tools!