One of the fun things about working on my winning look for the Her Universe Fashion Show 2023 was getting to try out a bunch of new tools and techniques that I wouldn’t have otherwise had the motivation to do so. It really pushed me to explore. So for part 5 of the series I wanted to share some of the new tools that I got that I liked and how I used them. Plus you might still be able to catch some Black Friday or Cyber Monday sales to grab some of them if you’re so inspired!
I am not an affiliate for any of these companies or Amazon so I don’t earn any money if you click these links. Just trying to make it easier for you to find what might help you!
Boning Tip Die
When you do steel bones, you need to tip them. You can do them with plastidip (that’s how they typically come when you order them pre-cut), teflon tape (I use this method, too), but my preference is to use the steel tips. However, I have always found crimping them down to be a royal pain.
My friend Jill has a die for her grommet press that will crimp the bone tips. I think there is one for my grommet press as well, but it’s like $30 and I don’t know how well it works. Well, turns out Margaret Reck (known as kynowyn on Thingiverse) created one and uploaded to Thingiverse for public use! I ordered a Dritz snap setter, printed out one and, wow, it works so well. So fast, so easy. I don’t know why I waited so long.
Spiral Steel Cutters
Similar to the bone tipping die, I finally got a pair of spiral steel cutters. I was hesitant on these because they’re pretty expensive on the usual corset supply place I go to, corsetmakingsupplies.com. However, I found dupes on amazon for $10. Now, it’s possible (likely?) these aren’t as high quality as the corsetmakingsupplies.com ones, but they worked for me and they did a way better job cutting spiral steel than the sheers I was using. Another win.
Cricut Easy Press
I have wanted a Cricut Easy Press for a while. I have had a few projects where it would have been very helpful already (Mal jacket) and I have a few more planned, but they’re around $120 so I was hesitant. But I had a really great idea that could save me tons of time for the rhinestones, so I finally got one. And I love it. It’s such a great tool. And the rhinestone trick worked. I’ll talk more about that in the rhinestone post. Honestly, even if I never use it again, the amount of time it saved me made the cost worth it. But I will definitely use it again. Already planning to use it for race costumes in February.
Olfa Circle Cutter
As I mentioned in the <Dot Post>, I tried out 2 circle cutting tools. These tools are aimed at quilters which since I quilt was part of the reason I was familiar with them. I preferred the Olfa cutter to the Fiskars cutter. The Fiskars one required folding the fabric in half and made it harder to place the circle. Also, if the line wasn’t exactly on the fold, your circle wouldn’t be precisely a circle. A downside to the Olfa is that you could potentially end up with a pin mark in the center, but I found it came out with a press of the iron. Also, you have to keep the Olfa blade sharp or else it’ll mess up as you’re using it, but that’s not really a problem since you notice quickly when it starts to dull. So, yeah, very happy with this circle cutter. I’m sure I’ll be using it more in the future for some other looks or possibly even quilts.
Lady Lumps-a-lot
I’ve had a dressform that I affectionately call Lumpy for a couple years now and it’s been a great aid in my sewing. However, I’ve found that when I make close fitting garments I can’t get them to fit on it. I’m pretty squishy around the middle and my dress form is not. Lumpy is also a little bigger across the back than I am which means things don’t always close.
So I treated myself to another dress form that I have dubbed Lady Lumps-a-lot from the The Shop Company, the same place I got Lumpy as I’ve been happy with the quality. This time I got legs and arms instead of just shoulders. The back shoulder width is a better fit. I do wish they’d had one size smaller as I can just barely zip things up. But it was great for me to be able to put my dress on an actual dress form at the correct height (my height in heels).
I started padding out the hips, but Lady Lumps-a-lot has a much narrower hip than I do and it was taking forever so I kinda gave up since it wasn’t critical for this project, but I will pad it out once I decide to work on some pants.
Bias Binder Attachment
The last tool on this list was one that I was planning to use, but as you’ll see in the Mistakes Were Made post, I never ended up getting to the point where I would have used it. I picked up a generic binder for my machine.
Now, Bernina does sell binders, but they are about $300 dollars at most places. No joke. And especially since I didn’t even know if I was going to have time to get to binding the layers and layers of tulle I was buying it for, I wasn’t keen on shelling out that kinda money. So I figured I’d try one of the off-brand ones for $40 and see how it went. Since it’s just used for feeding fabric into the machine and wouldn’t affect alignment or anything mechanical like a foot would, I wasn’t worried about it “messing up my machine” or anything like that.
I’m hoping the brand name Bernina ones work better, but this one isn’t bad. It requires a little finagling to get it in the right place, but I was able to decently apply satin ribbon as binding. Yes, I did try it for the dots and I couldn’t use it without enough accuracy. It’s okay on curves, but probably requires some practice. But if I need to make a petticoat again, I’ll definitely be able to use it for that. I think. I’d definitely need a bit of practice before using it on anything I care about or that requires precision.
And since I like to leave you with a photo from the actual event, here’s a pic of me and the audience winner Raeven doing our winners walk after the announcement.
Photo by HC Photography
