The Cottage Mama's Sewing Basket: Tube Turners

Today we are back with another fun, little tool from The Cottage Mama's Sewing Basket. These tube turners may look like a simple tool, but they will change your life. And if you don't have them in your sewing basket, I'm going to recommend you pick up a set.

What does this tool do? Tube turners are kind of like they sound. They make it easy to turn tubes of fabric right side out. Have you ever been working on a long sash for a dress or straps for a tote bag and found it took forever to turn the fabric right side out? Well, these little tools make such fast work of this. Here's how.....

Simply place the blue plastic tube down inside your tube of fabric (or sash) that is currently turned wrong side out. Take the wooden dowel and push it up through the finished end of the fabric and up through the blue plastic tube.

Continue pushing the wooden dowel up through the plastic tube until the fabric appears at the top of the plastic tube and is right side out. At that point you can remove the wooden dowel and just continue to pull the fabric out through the top of the plastic tube.

And there you have it.......a quick turn tube turner! Yes, you can most certainly turn tubes and sashes with something like a chopstick, but let me tell you......these are even easier and worth the small investment. You can find Quick Turn Tube Turners in the notions section of your local fabric and sewing store. They generally come in a pack of three with different sizes. I have the Dritz brand, but there may be other brands on the market as well.

There is also another handy-dandy tool used for turning completely open tubes (with no finished end), but we'll save that one for another installment of The Cottage Mama's Sewing Basket.


*I was not compensated in any way promoting the products and tools found in The Cottage Mama's Sewing Basket. These are all tools, notions and things that I love and use.

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The Cottage Mama's Sewing Basket: Fabric Marking Pens

First off, I apologize if I sound overly enthusiastic in the following post. But honestly if I could write this post with all caps and end every sentence with an exclamation mark, I would. Secondly, I want you to know that I have absolutely know affiliation with this company or product, I just really, really like it.

So, I didn't get to take any classes myself when I was teaching at the Martha Pullen School of Art Fashion, but I did learn a few things. And these Pilot FriXion Erasable Gel Pens have changed my life. Maybe you've known about these all along and I am late to the party, but oh my goodness, these are the best fabric marking pens ever! They are not designed to use on fabric, but they work like a dream.

Darlene, our classroom machine educator, introduced these pens to my assistant Terri and I during class. She had one and asked us if we had ever seen these, neither of us had, so Darlene showed us how they worked. It blew our minds.

These pens glide along the fabric making a beautiful mark just as they would on paper. And guess how they disappear? With your IRON! The friction of your iron rubbed on top of the fabric makes them disappear practically on contact. There is a little eraser on the pen, but the iron works so much better.

You can buy the Pilot FriXion Erasable Gel Pens at your local office supply store or online and they come in a bunch of different colors. The only problem you might have is if you are marking on black fabric, you still might need to use your white pencil or chalk, but other than that, these will be all you'll ever need in the fabric marking department.

Trust me, you must go out and buy these now!

PS: The Cottage Mama's Sewing Basket is going to be a new series of posts where I show you all the tools I love to use when I sew. Some may be ones that you've heard of and others may not, but I always think it's fun to get a little glimpse inside someone else's sewing basket.

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