Sewing a dress is so much easier with the right tools. And the right tools aren’t necessarily so fancy or complicated.
The most used sewing tools in sewing dresses are basically, but not limited to, a pair of scissors, stick pins, and a tape measure. These tools ensure an efficient sewing experience as well as several others that will be mentioned below.
Do you ever sew a dress just for fun? If not, you should give it a try. Buy a piece of fabric, download and print this FREE Anna Dress pattern, and sew yourself a dress.
It’s an easy pattern and doesn’t take much to sew together. And while you’re at it, you may as well make sure you have all the tools (that are listed below) so that your sewing experience is that much better.
Pair of Sharp Sewing Scissors
The best way to cut out a dress, especially if you are cutting out knit fabric, is a pair of sharp scissors. (The Anna Dress pattern requires knit fabric)
Cutting out a dress with dull scissors is a sure way to down the road of frustration and lost patience.
So make sure your fabric scissors are sharp!
Because you really don’t want to lose patience. Patience is really quite nice to have around. And if you do lose it, bad things can happen. 😜
And who wants bad things to happen just because you wanted to sew a dress!?
In the case of having scissors that are dull, there are easy ways to sharpen them, and of course you’ll find all of them on Youtube.
Another thing about scissors, you may want a small pair to sit by your sewing machine for snipping threads. That one is pretty handy too!
Flexible Measuring Tape
Measuring is a part of every single step of sewing a dress. A measuring tape is vital to sewing something so that it can be made to the right measurements.
And the flexible tape means you can hang it around your neck so that it doesn’t gets lost or misplaced during the process.
There are different lengths of measuring tapes but the most common and easiest to use are the ones that are 60 inches or 152 centimeters long.
And it’s even good to have a couple of them, because if you are like me, you may cut it in half because you didn’t realize it was caught under the fabric you were cutting.
I don’t know how many times I have done that. And they can be taped together to last longer, but it’s really nice to have a backup in case it’s not salvagable.
And of course, if you have those nice sharp scissors, you’ll be able to cut through anything!😉
Sewing Pins
Once it’s time to sew that beautiful fabric into a dress, sewing pins are going to be needed to keep the fabric in place to make beautiful seams.
As with the scissors, the pins need to be sharp. So getting good quality pins will be your best option. And get lots of them.
Pins are easy to lose. Especially if your pin container likes to jump off the table periodically like mine does. Woop! Crash! And pins are everywhere.
You’re bound to not find them all. And only hope that nobody’s feet will find those stray pins later. 😬
Along with buying lots of pins, buy a pin cushion as well. You can either get a real pin cushion that you poke the pins into or a magnetic one that the pins stick to.
Whichever you prefer. The authentic pin cushion will hold up the best when it decides to jump off the table where the magnetic one, when jumping, will lose more pins, they all go flying.
The Seam Ripper
Yes, you need one of these. I know you are going to do a great job at sewing, but even the experienced sewists use seam rippers.
Sorry. 😔
There are a couple different types of seam rippers. The one above is the style I really like but any type is good so long as it cuts the stitching.
I know getting a seam ripper feels like you’re admitting that you’re going to make mistakes. But listen, when you make mistakes you learn. And that’s the truth. Making mistakes can actually be a good thing! 😊
Fabric Pen
The pen pictured above is actually a frixion pen. The marks from these pens comes off when heated, so simply iron the marks and they disappear.
You can also buy pens that will wash away and they are made for marking on fabric. They work great too, but my preference is frixion pens.
The great thing about them too is that they work on paper as well. So if you want to mark something on the pattern you can use this pen. The water erasable pens don’t work well on paper.
Use pens like this to mark darts, buttons, buttonholes or adjustments you want to make to the dress.
Conclusion
There are many more tools you can buy to sew, but these five are the most important and you can sew many dresses just with these.
- fabric scissors
- flexible measuring tape
- sewing pins
- seam ripper
- fabric pen
All these items can be purchased at stores like Walmart or Amazon. Your best option though is to find a store that specifically sells fabric. They have some of the best tools plus employees that know exactly what’s what and can give you a lot of advice.
Setting up to sew doesn’t need to be complicated and if you buy these five simple tools, some fabric, and of course a sewing machine, you are ready!
Wishing you many happy hours of sewing!
