15 Dollar Store Sewing Hacks for $40

hi friends it's amy your sewing teacher i'm here today to talk to you about my trip to the dollar tree [Music] so there are so many different things in sewing that cost a lot of money because sewing is a niche market so over the years come to find many things that can replace the expensive things coming from the dollar store so today i have 15 items so 15 ideas for you that are going to save you some money let's start right away with magnet strip the magnet strip alone won't do what you need but if you add the magnet strip and you glue it onto the base of a stainless steel bowl you can make yourself a magnet bowl so i bought one of these years ago from a quilting store and it cost me 35 it's a stainless steel bowl with a magnet on the bottom now this magnet is a high-powered magnet so you will need quite a bit of your magnet tape when you glue it onto the bottom of your bowl but also at the dollar store in the hardware section you can find little magnetic trays way better than a 30 dish the next thing isn't for sewing the next thing is for making that magnet dish i'm not good with a glue stick i can run circles with a sewing machine but with a with a glue gun i burn my fingers every time found these lovely ladies and these will protect my fingers from that hot glue the next thing i want to show you is something that i replace every single year this little notebook here and of course i love it when it says something sassy because i like to stay sassy so every single year i buy a new notebook and the notebook helps me keep track of all of my sewing ideas any new designs that i have or anything that is going to be needed to be recorded for my business i usually divide it in half and i put my personal things in the front and business in the back this is this year's book and it's january so this is my new book the next thing i want to talk about are glue sticks glue sticks come in handy in so many ways in the sewing room you just have to make sure that you let them dry before you try to sew over otherwise you'll gum up your knee your needle and that will be very good but i love glue stick for holding zippers in i run my glue stick across the top of the zipper tape i glue it onto the fabric and then i can just wonder clip it and there's no movement once it's dried i can sew right over it no problem another thing that i use glue sticks for in the sewing room is for when i make templates these are cutting mats i bought four of them because i have lots to do right now but these cutting mats they are fabulous for making templates for a while i was making templates out of placemats it's laminated on the top and has foam on the bottom and this is really good because the foam doesn't slide so if you find that your templates are sliding the placemats might be the better one for you but i love using these ones because they don't take up much space they're really fantastic so what do i do i print off my pdf pattern and then i cut the pieces for the pattern and i glue stick them onto either this one or this one and then i cut them out with regular scissors and when i do that i end up with a template for a pattern that i use regularly and then i don't have to worry about my pattern being destroyed about having to print it off again finding that file that i purchased so now this time when i find that i really love something i make a template right away so i glue on the piece of pattern i cut it out and then i put them all together in one of these plastic paper protectors sheet protectors and then i put the pattern in with it and then i take this and i hang it up if this is my active one that i'm using right now then i hang it on my bulletin board if it's not then it goes in my cupboard and it's all tucked away and i don't have to worry about losing a thing the next thing i want to show you are binder clips now binder clips come in all different sizes and can be used for so many things i even sometimes will use a giant binder clip as as a stand for my phone but today i just bought the medium sized ones and i'm going to show you what i use these for when i am sewing with leather or upholstery fabric or something that is bulky and might have bulky seams i use a binder clip instead of a wonder clip so let me show you one that i have actively working right now so this is a pouch that i'm making it is leather and upholstery fabric on the outside and all that i've done is i have attached my binder clip on the edge just like i would a wonder clip and they're really really great for specialty fabrics also because you don't want to pin through some of those specialty fabrics so the binder clips are great and they are really snug like it takes a lot to pull them off without intention so if you're like me and you like to batch so and you do things in stages then having something that you know you can put aside in a pile and then not falling off or coming out is very very good another thing that binder clips are great for is hanging things so for instance i was just talking about how i store my templates and it's really fantastic that i can just go like this and i have an automatic hanger do not buy the velcro from the dollar store that has a sticky side because if you use your needle through the sticky kind of velcro your needle will gum up over time some dollar stores you can purchase velcro that isn't sticky and that's the kind that you want to use next thing i'm going to show you is washi tape i think that's how you say it wassie washi i'm sorry anyway craft tape this tape i buy the skinny ones there are five in this package you can also buy them wider i use it on my machine i use um probably about three or four of them at a time and that way i know what each of the seam allowances that i might be using where they are and i can just gauge my fabric right up with the tape so here's a picture of what that looks like next is a clip-on light when you are advancing in years or if you wear glasses sometimes it's really hard to see what's going on in your sewing machine if your light's not working or if your light works and it's just a dim light so i purchased the clip-on spotlight and this one's really great because it can clip on it's battery operated and you can clip it onto your machine and then you can direct you can direct the light according to where you need it to go and you have an automatic spotlight the next thing i'm going to show you is newsprint i use newsprint for almost everything newsprint is really great if you're doing your own designs if you are trying and creating different things it's a lot cheaper than printer paper um the other thing i might use would be craft paper it is so reasonably priced and it's recyclable and what when i am making garments i have to often extend the length of things because i have a child who's six foot five and i am almost six foot so a regular ladies pattern often needs to be um longer for me and for him i extend the pattern and tape it on so really cheap and very handy to have around the house the next thing i'm going to show you are these hardware clips they call these craft clamps at the dollar store but if you don't see them at your craft aisle at the dollar store you can try in the hardware aisle they won't be pretty and have a pink handle but that's okay you can usually find them in orange or black or red these are fantastic for keeping things where i need them to be kept so i clamp things onto my table all the time one of the things i like to clamp is my quilting ruler so i use my quilting ruler whenever i'm cutting leather um and if i'm cutting something there i need a straight edge for so what i do is i take my client my ruler i put it down on my table on top of my cutting mat and then i clamp it on next thing i want to talk about are cork sheets cork sheets come in handy for me because i i like to pin things to the wall and it's not really attractive to just pin it directly to the wall so i have created a mosaic of these on my wall and then i pinned through them into the wall and it's just a little bit prettier so i use those as a bulletin board if you don't like pins in your wall then you should buy yourself a nice big thick proper bulletin board don't use these on your wall but if you're like me and you don't mind you know fixing the drywall before you paint next time these are really great another thing that i use these cork sheets for is for the base of a bag for a base of a tote bag you can cut these in half and have a great sturdy bottom of a bag just make sure that you let your clients know or just know yourself that you can't wash these especially if the bag is a washable bag you want to make sure that they know that this is not washable but cork sheath we're almost done dollar store ziploc bags these are slider bags so these are super easy to use to open and close because they have the slider i find that sometimes ziploc bags i have difficulty finding the spot and getting the zip to go so i really like slider bags and that's why the dollar store is really great for that but let me show you a picture this is me organizing zippers so i'm a sustainable sewer sewist and i keep everything and so one of the things that i have a lot of are zippers so i arrange them by length like you saw in the picture and then i group them and i put them into the ziploc bags and i love these ziploc bags because they have the great little window label whatever you want to call that and that is where i write what type of zipper it is now the last thing that we want to talk about today i love mac tech shelf paper self-adhesive wallpaper it doesn't matter i love this stuff i put it on everything at school i put it on cabinets so that my room looks pretty um i put it on counters i've put it on top of the dresser that i have in my room here and i thought you know what i'm gonna try using this on my cutting mat now my cutting mat is a self-sealable so i can put this in the bathtub and seal it every time it gets a little bit you know too rough so i decided to cover this um and i love the way that it looks it gives me a table top to work on and when i'm doing videos for my students where i have my camera pointing down off the table it actually because of the white and gray pattern makes it easier for the students to see what i'm working on and it's excellent i also cut on this side so if i'm cutting a bag with a template i put the fabric down i use my rotary cutter and i cut around my template and it doesn't look too bad and the best thing about this stuff is i can just pull up the corner and begin to peel it off it peels right back off so here i have a nice pretty surface for my table and i can peel it off and then throw my mat into the bathtub to repair it or i can peel it off and put a new layer on and it can be fresh however often i want it to be fresh anyway friends thank you so much for joining me today this has been 15 hacks from the dollar store for your sewing room and your sewing practice thanks for joining me please come back soon and see what else we have to offer subscribe by pressing the button and the bell will give you notifications every time we put a new video up join me and my students on our sewing journey so along with us maybe check out some of the fun videos while you're here have a great week we'll see you next week

Channel: Your Sewing Teacher

Views: 138,661

Rating: 4.9283466 out of 5

Keywords: sewing, hacks, sewing hacks, life hacks, diy, sewing diy, dollar store, sewing on a budget, cheapskate sewing, arts and crafts, cheap sewing, sewing materials, sewing notions, shop with me, save with me, budget, savings, Hack, Sewing, Sewing hack, Sewing tips, Tips for sewing, Cheap sewing notions, Sewing room hacks

Id: 90n929ort4M

Length: 14min 12sec (852 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 17 2021