Looking for some gifts for your favorite quilter that won’t break the bank? Here’s a list of cool items this quilter (and probably his quilter) can’t live without!
-The curved safety pins are used to hold the three parts of the quilt together during the quilting process. They are always lost and you never seem to get enough of these.
-Sewing Pliers- Get pins with the little plastic balls at the end so they can be easily seen and easily put on and taken out.
-White, tan or light gray spools of thread to join the upper part of the quilts.
-A pack of fine English needles for the quilter who enjoys hand quilt tops. Okay, in my opinion the best needles I have found for my handpieces have been the English ones.
-Gutters and quilters ALWAYS need new needles for their sewing machines (bring the sewing machine’s name and model number to the store so they can make sure you buy the correct type)
– Archival quality fabric pens so your quilter can correctly document their name, the date, and who the quilt was made for on the quilt. In 100 years, you’ll want your great-grandchildren to know who made the quilt and why. In 200 years, when you’re in a museum, they’ll want the same information.
-A quilt journal so your quilter can take a photo of any quilt he makes and document it in his journal. Hopefully the magazine will last 200 years so it can be used to match those museum pieces to the creator.
-seam rippers-I notice that as mine get older they don’t work as well. Oh, and you don’t wish life was like bad sewing; you could just rip it off, start over, and know that you need to know you made a mistake.
-Fat Quarters of Fabric-A quarter yard of fabric is a quarter yard of fabric, but the yard is cut in such a way that a quarter yard of thick fabric is created versus a thin quarter yard of fabric.
There are entire quilt books dedicated to making quilts only from the fat rooms. Chunky quarters can add a wide range of colors to a quilter’s stash without taking up a lot of space. The one who dies with the biggest stash wins.
-Needle case to hold the sewing needles-I need them! I have mine taped to the cork board over my quilting area. That’s probably not good for those fine English needles that I love.
-Doll style cushion-I LOVE MINE! Makes it easy to keep track of pins as you pull them out of a seam on the sewing machine; otherwise they end up in a pile next to the machine where they inevitably fall to the ground and you have to find them. THEN you will need the next little gadget.
-Magnetic Pin Collector-We quilters NEVER drop a container of pins all over the floor and then go to great lengths to pick them all up by hand. Oh no … never.
-metal needle threaders- NO! My eyes don’t age; They keep poking the smallest needle holes every year!
-Regular table style pin cushion
-Good quality chocolate bars-Oh yeah, a must for quilting. When you can’t get all those stupid little dots to line up properly and you’re trying to hit the ripper one more time, you need chocolate therapy. Trust me on this.