 Hey guys, welcome to Inside the Hem. This is Amber. I'm Lindsay and Abby. Today we're going to share with you some of our favorite notions and talk a little bit about why we picked them. So I'm gonna start with my first one and these are gonna be our top three favorites. This is my favorite, which is my rotary cutter and I wish I had gotten it sooner because cutting used to be my least favorite part of the sewing process, but this makes it so much faster. It's also got like a rubberized handle so it's kind of easy to grip. It doesn't hurt my hands like scissors do. This one's also really cool because it's got like a safety guard so unless you're pressing down on it you can't cut yourself, which is something I would do. It's also got a lock and it's got two settings, a light and a heavy, depending on what type of fabric you're cutting. So you can switch that. It's pretty easy to change the blade, which I've had to do in and by refills. So this is my favorite thing. Yeah, we'll leave a link in the comments to that particular one since it seems like not all rotary cutters are pretty lethal. Yeah, I did some research and this had good reviews and then a thing you want to get with it is a cutting mat. You got it from Amazon though? Mm-hmm. Yeah, well. Alright, mine is a pressing ham and if you've never seen one of these before it is basically like a wool type fabric and a cotton type fabric and it's stuffed and it's pretty hard and you use this to press curved seams so it's really good for sleeves or I really like it for princess seams because you know you have to get the bust line so perfect but it had the one the two different fabrics one side is for like high heat and lots of steam and the other side is for like when you need to use lighter heat. I actually did not know that. Really? Yeah. But you made yours right? It was a gift. Yeah, so you can make these yourself. It's really just like an egg shaped thing. You can even kind of see where they hand stitch to close here. A lot of people use scraps to stuff inside too so that's like a good way to use up some teeny tiny scraps that you don't want for any other reason. But yeah, it's really great for sewing on curved seams. It makes it a lot easier and you don't burn yourself as much so that is a bonus. I got mine to see Brett. I can tell. I feel like big unveiling here. What first? I think the one, I'll share the one I use the most. My Friction pens. I love these pens so much. You can get them a lot of places. I've actually never looked for them at a place like Joann's or Hancock's. I know my local shop sells them but I got a big set of them on Amazon. They come in every single color which I actually do find. I need all these colors because I like pretty colorful fabric but they come in ballpoint pens so you get a really nice dart. I always use the ballpoint for when I'm drawing a line for a dart. They also have highlighter ones which are good for a thicker quick kind of line and what so great about the friction pens is they disappear when you iron them so you don't have to worry about a mark. You don't have to wash it out but you do want to be careful when using these and spot test your fabric because I use them on some fabrics and just the test piece and it left a white mark behind. The white mark would come out when I washed it but you just want to be careful and make sure you don't use it on a fabric that they'll leave a mark behind. Cool. Yeah I got a lot of good pens. Yeah. Those are great too. I bought a set just because she told me about them. I hadn't even heard of them too and I have click ones. It's the same brand, same company but it clicks down and I only have three colors. I have red, black and blue and so far that's worked pretty well for anything. So my next tool, sticking with the like cutting theme are these little thread snips and these I've gotten more recently. I think I bought them last year and it's got a nice little safety cap so I don't stab myself. Which I would lose immediately. And then it's got a nice rubber comfy grip too. You just, you know, put your... Ambers won't have any arthritis ever. I know. All of the comfort groups. Yes, comfort. No, I don't, I type all day at work. Yeah, that's true. I wanted something, anyway, you can get like really close and accurate with them and so they work really well. I like these a lot. So happy with the thread. Cool. Sticking with the ironing theme, I guess we each have our own things going here. I have a Taylor's Clapper and this is basically a piece of wood that has been just shaped and sanded down really well. And what this is for is when you need to get like a thicker fabric to have like a really crisp fold in it with a hem or a pleat or anything like that, you'll put, you'll apply a lot of steam to the fabric and then you'll place this over top and it's pretty heavy. So it'll be weighted and apparently the science behind it is the wood is not finished. It's raw wood and so the wood absorbs the steam faster but keeps the heat in the fabric and so that's what creates that really crisp nice fold and whatever you're doing. So it works really well if you've got like a jacket lapel like this doesn't have one but or even this jacket that I'm wearing here you had to fold over this little like facing, this self-facing so it got this scene here really crisp jeans it's really really good on for those pockets because you have to fold over all those little edges. But yeah I find myself using this a lot and I really think it makes a difference. I don't think it's like just an illusion but yeah Taylor's Clapper. Yeah that definitely helped when I was doing my jeans. I don't have one of those that I borrowed yours and I was doing the belt loops to like smash them flat so much nice. You could tell the difference too. Awesome what you got. Alright next I have kind of a recent discovery within the last year it is a buttonhole cutter. It's by Clover. I love things with buttons but I absolutely think the worst part is picking them out. It just takes forever it just looks sloppy to me it never looks like a store-bought buttonhole and then I don't even know how I came across this thing probably just playing around on Amazon but you just put could you even use this? You have to be very careful of course because you can sniff your threads and then bye bye buttonhole. There's no going back from that but this thing is amazing it makes the whole process so much easier and they look so clean I mean they look like a store-bought buttonhole when you use this. So it's almost like I'm actually like a guillotine cut versus like a saw. Yeah I bought one too because she recommended it and I am I've used it quite a lot actually and found like I kind of just I have the you know fabric and I kind of actually just do this on top of my desk so I have a little thing but I just kind of you know press it down vertically and then I kind of shake it back and forth a little bit and I can like hear it. Yes you can hear it crunch. That's going to be satisfying. Crisp and clean. Nice. So definitely better than like accidentally ripping. Yeah gosh I mean it can take hours. I mean I made that the Dior and Joe Brutier I don't know how you pronounce it it's French buttons all the way down the Grainlight Studio. Alder. Alder. Alder is the trash. I mean that's a lot of buttonholes to pick out. True. Okay this is my last one. I knew you were gonna read those. I mean and this actually I just threw them in like an old crystal light container just any the container and these the ones that I bought came with it like super hard to open so these are my Wonder Clips and this one's actually by Clover but I think there are a couple other brands who sell the same thing but it's just like a little tiny clip I know some people use those like black bulldog clips that like an office supply store has but these are really nice they're actually have little like measuring increments on the back too. No we see. I do. I never knew that. There's like a little like those two but they're great for applying bias binding and it's also great for heavy fabrics like denim or like a leather I would just test it. Sometimes it leaves like a little mark so I test it on a leather but denim it's great for putting all those thick layers together and then also when you're surging like if I make a pair of like leggings or yoga pants I'll just clip them and run it through the serger and it's so much faster and also really good if you're into making bags which if you are you probably already found Wonder Clips because it's gonna be very hard to pin through those thick layers of interfacing. So I picked this is actually a three in one item it is a point turner you can see here so like on this jacket him for example has a self-facing so you obviously sewed it right sides together and you need to pull this out and then you need to put something in there to get this point nice and perfect right before you press it using your tailor's clapper but it also has a ruler on there which you can use for like seam allowances and then thirdly it is a button gauge do you guys know what a button gauge does? I've never used one like that. So basically it just allows for some space between the bottom of the button and the top of your fabric so you can actually wrap the button around it so there is a smaller one and a thicker one so those are really makes the button shank handy and coincidentally you can also use this as a hump jumper so if you like your presser foot is like pointing up you can stick this under the back end and it'll help it level out with the fabric get over a thick seam that yeah it's definitely not marketed is that but it could be perfect what about you what your last one? The last one is this pressing cloth I actually won this in a giveaway from a fashionable stitch which at her shop I'm pretty sure is completely closed up by now but she had an online shop that had really nice notions things you don't find like at Joanne's so this was something I picked out with the money I had one from her shop and it's just silk organza but it protects any kind of fabric from the heat of the iron so I actually used it when making this top right here because of the lace you know lace can melt under the iron so I just put this on and you press I really like that it's see-through so you can see what you're doing you can see what you're pressing you could use any type of cloth to press but this one is supposed to be the best so so is that sold as a pressing cloth or is you just by any scrawling silk organza yes but this she had marketed as a pressing cloth on her interesting yeah my pressing cloth is what I just got it from like the laundry section target and it's just it's like a nylon net it's like a wider like the holes are bigger yeah so I don't know what the benefit of one or the other is but she was curious notions that were really nice quality so I am trusting that there's a reason why I actually just have like an old towel like it's a it's just cotton like a flat one I can't see through it which would be nice if I upgraded yeah nothing fancy cool well that does it for the notions thanks for watching and be sure and subscribe so that you can see our next video next week yep yeah you can also follow us on all of the social accounts if you want to just know what we're up to and get a sneak peek into our next video but leave in the comments below what your favorite notion is we would love to hear from you guys we read all the comments and would just like to see maybe you will teach us something new that would be awesome I would love to find a new notion from one of you guys in the comments definitely leave it there yes anything else I'd be well the pizza guy just brought time to go yeah but only links down at the bottom so that you can see places where you can try and find these if you're interested absolutely about it out until next time thank you bye