Thursday 1 October 2015

Drawing The Curtains

This month I have made one set of curtains for myself [for the spare bedroom] and shortened another pair for a friend. I thought it was worth mentioning some gadgets which really made the task a lot easier. Everybody knows that precision is the key thing – you need to cut straight, iron straight and hem straight!

sharpener

I would not be without my Fiskars Scissors [over 40 years old now] and my Fiskars Sharpener. The latter was purchased in Spring 2013, and it is brilliant at really putting a sharp edge on my scissors. It was pricey [currently they are around £16] but it has certainly made a difference to cutting out fabric. All that wedding bunting was a breeze, with sharp scissors!

rowenta dg7140 iron[4]

Then my steam generator iron – this is a Rowenta DG7140G0, bought over 7 years ago – I paid less than £50. It seemed a lot then – but similar ones are around £200 now. It makes ironing so much easier!

P1020299Years ago I would never have dreamed of drawing on my curtains with a ballpoint pen – but now I use a Frixion Pen for marking fabrics all the time. It is brilliant, and once you have finished, you just iron away the marks.

These pens, made by Pilot, work with Thermosensitive Technology – you can draw where you want to fold, cut or stitch, and the marks are good and clear – then, once heated to 65ÂșC they will disappear – so even a gentle iron will eradicate your marks.

These pens are quite inexpensive- I have worked in a couple of schools where they supply them to the pupils. That is because they have a friction eraser built into the top. Personally I am not sure that this is altogether a good idea – rubbing out wrong answers may not always help. When teaching maths, I prefer children to cross out their errors so I can see how they were thinking [frequently they had the right answer to start with, then doubted themselves] But school aside, they are excellent tools in the needleworker’s kit.

Any more curtains needing to be hung, drawn and shortened?

2 comments:

  1. Those friction pens are genius!! My colleague has a red one for marking books with which is great for when you've accidently picked two kids books up and written the wrong name in the book (I did that twice last week!)x

    ReplyDelete
  2. That's interesting - back in the 80s they brought out erasable pens and my school BANNED them. Isn't there a danger children might erase a teacher's unpleasant comments before Mum reads them??

    ReplyDelete

Always glad to hear from you - thanks for stopping by!
I am blocking anonymous comments now, due to excessive spam!