 Hi you guys, Lindsay here and it is a new month, it is the second month of 2017 February which means I have my January favorites and this month I don't know it's because it's a new year and you have that sense of refreshing renewal and all of that but I found a lot of really cool things this month that I really really love so I actually have one two three four five favorites for you this month it's a lot but like I said I just stumbled upon these things and fell in love with them so I just have to share them with all of you so let's jump right in since I have so many first of all I want to give a shout out to Jen one of our viewers she commented on the 2016 sewing favorites video and introduced me to the next two favorites that I'm going to tell you about so thanks so much for the heads up you were right I love them they're awesome and now I will pay it forward and share it with everyone else so the first thing she told me about was the dritz machine needle organizer so this is basically a card like this it's plastic and on it it has different sections for different types of needles so universal denim micro techs ballpoint leather embroidery metallic stretch long arm twin hem stitch quilting and top stitch and then within each category has the different sizes of the needles and then there's like this little like the soft part of velcro basically there's a little strip there and you just slip your needles in and the like I don't know furry part of the velcro like holds them in so I used to have I just kept all my needles in the little containers that they came in and I just had them stored in my sewing toolbox that I've showed you guys before and not only did I not like that it wasn't really organized every time I wanted a universal needle I had to go through all of the little packs of course the last pack I come across is the one I actually need but I discovered through this process that I was like buying duplicates of things that I already had I have so many universal size 80 and 90s that I couldn't even fit them all on here I had to have this little look does this look familiar to you guys it's the it's the tray from the brother 10 34d serger I don't know it just looked like it fit them so I just stuck them in there for now I'll make something cuter I promise but um but anyways I had so many that I had to put like all my backups in this little tray here so that I could get them out get everything out of the toolbox and either on to here and then the backups into here so that was really surprising to me because you know you get to Joanne's and you always think oh I definitely need needles well now I know that I'm good on several categories for quite a long time I mean who needs one two three five leather 110 needles I don't know I guess apparently I did when I was gonna sew leather I have like a gazillion stretch needles so yeah I just really helped you keep a really good inventory of what you have to because you know just oh shoot I just dropped them all but our fingers it's hard for the course these days instead of keeping them all in these little packets and then keeping the little packets stored away somewhere you can never know what all you have of anything so yeah the dritz machine needle organizer is favorite number one that's actually the second time I've done that tonight full disclosure I just have butter fingers right now brain fog is another symptom that I'm going through so just try to stay patient and keep things moving along okay the next thing that Jen told me about is this and it looks a little weird now because it's not put in place but basically it is a heat safe mat with as you can see one inch grid lines it also has a bias line marked and this is a mat that sits underneath your sewing machine and then this little part hangs off the edge of the sewing machine is little baskets so little pockets so you can put your scissors in there you can put your needles in there and then the one over here is like a little trash bag so you drop your little thread into the trash bag and then whenever you're ready to throw it away you just rip this thing off and then dump out your trash you can wash this thing it's really cool and like I said you can it's heat proof so you can iron straight onto this so if you're working with smaller pieces i.e. if you're a quilter but also for us garment sewers like if you're just doing like a small neckband or something like that you can bring your iron over closer to your sewing machine and keep everything kind of all in one place I also really love this because I like having something under my machine between my machine and the table that it's on I feel like the machine itself is more stable it's quieter which is also a bonus and I just feel like my machine's happier sitting on a little cushion I don't know so yeah the official title of this thing is the household essentials sewing and ironing accessory pad so of course all as usual all of the links to everything I'm talking about today is going to be in the description box below so if you're on a mobile device I think it's a little teeny tiny arrow on like the bottom right and then if you're on a desktop it's kind of a bigger button in the same area but but yeah all the information and all the links to all the products are in the description box below okay so the next item I have is actually something I should have done a long long time ago and I think that I never did because I just didn't know what to look for and that is to invest in a good pair of scissors so I settled on the brand called Kai KAI is a Japanese brand which I really love because I don't know I associate Japanese with like good craftsmanship and things that last long that could be a complete stereotype it's okay I'm a quarter Japanese so I guess in a way I'm allowed to say that but yeah I just associate Japanese manufacturers as with like good quality stuff and so they make a ton of different scissors and they range in price I ended up going with a like a set that they sell but I actually found that I could get all the pieces of the set sold separately on Amazon for a few dollars cheaper so I ended up doing that instead so this is their very berry which is like the pink which I had to have but also it's a practical reason because I wanted something that was gonna stand out in my sewing box and on my sewing table so I'm not like hunting around for black handles you never see those they would blend in but these bright pink ones they stand out and it comes with a really cool cover this one is scissors and it's I want to say four and a half inch and they're called embroidery scissors but I like them for like thread snipping they're perfect for a serger thread snipping cutting the little notches out of fabrics they're perfect for that and I was not a hundred percent sure as to how big of a difference it was going to be I've had the orange handled fiskers that you can just get at any Joanne's craft store for since I started sewing and I have had two pairs of those and both of them at this point are so dull that I knew that I knew that there would be an improvement over the dull scissors I didn't know if I would notice an improvement over like if I had just gotten a brand new pair of fiskers and there it's like night and day like I almost want to go buy another pair of sister fiskers and do like a side-by-side comparison I mean cutting through fabric with these it's like slicing through butter like I can't even explain it the the even just like the hinge or just like opening and closing them is so much easier and when you cut through all the way to the tip it's just like seriously like slicing through butter it's it's amazing how much of a difference a good pair of scissors makes so I would say I got these which are embroidery scissors and then I got a large pair more for fabric cutting maybe this is what I get for trying to go cheap and ordering on Amazon but actually when the Amazon envelope came there was a hole in it and the scissors had fallen out so I'm waiting to get my replacement but in the meantime I've been using these a lot everything I've been using them for everything other than cutting out the main parts of the fabric but but yeah I really really love these scissors I'm going to be exclusively a Kai scissor and shear person from here on out I if you can't get a set if you can't get the nicest pair get any pair you can afford because I promise you you will use them a ton a ton a ton okay and then the last favorite that I have is actually online and it is the McCall's Facebook group I'm not sure if anybody who's watching is already a member or not they have like thousands of members apparently they just launched the Facebook group like early last year maybe February of last year and Meg Carter who does all their social media said that it was like really surprising to her to see how much the community has responded and I love the group because there are women from all different age ranges all different skill levels and everyone's just super encouraging everyone posts like really their projects which is really cool to see because you know it's kind of like Instagram when you see somebody you make something and you see it in a different way and inspires you to make it in a way that's really cool and it's helpful there have been people who have gone on and asked questions like I get lost on this piece like what am I doing wrong or they're asking about fabrics like which fabric would be good for this or you know those kinds of things I found a typo in one of the patterns and so I went on there and reported that and got some information on you know how to report that to the McCall's company I don't know there's just like anything any questions you have about any of the McCall's family of patterns which is McCall's Vogue and Butterick I think that's it just those three maybe one more is quick sell a part of them anyways the whole family of McCall's patterns any questions you have about anything you can post there and either other people from the community that don't work for McCalls at all will reply to you and you can get an answer that way or if it's a question for the company Meg or she has someone else that answers for her sometimes too will get you an answer that way so it's just really cool if you're new to sewing if you're new to pattern sewing I highly recommend joining just as a beginner but if you've been sewing for a while I think you'll find it really inspirational and fun to be a part of so I just really enjoyed like scanning through and it makes my Facebook feed like you know a little bit more enjoyable not political not any of that other crap that we're dealing with right now so it's just nice to see well so there you have it those are my favorites for the month of January again like I said before all of the links are in the description box below if you aren't already please subscribe to our channel there's going to be a little circle with mine and Abby's face right up here in the corner click that and you can subscribe and you can follow me on social media I'm posting all of my recent makes and other fun things we are at inside the him on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter so be sure to follow us there so until next time I'll see you guys bye