Attending a stitching class or workshop at Bluebell Design comes with an expectation that you will bring most of your own equipment with you.
Your basic sewing kit should contain the following items, as a bare minimum.
Your essential sewing kit
- Fabric scissors – these don’t need to be expensive, although they can be, but they should be sharp and used only for fabric.
- Small scissors for thread trimming and snipping.
- Paper scissors (supermarket kitchen scissors are good value here)
- Box of new, sharp pins. Ideally glass headed, to allow for use when pressing. Any old, blunt or rusty pins need to be binned.
- Pack of hand sewing needles. Again, buy new ones rather than use Granny’s old rusty needles. Your fabric will thank you.
- Couple of pencils, one HB and one softer, perhaps a B or 2B, plus a sharpener.
- Fabric chalks or markers.
- Measuring tape – ideally a new one, as old ones tend to be stretched and inaccurate.
- Quick unpicker / seam ripper.
- Sewing threads – at least one full spool of black, white, mid-grey and a mid-beige to start with. You will need to purchase matching thread for your later projects, but for now a few colours will be enough.
- Notepad and pen.
Your essential Sewing machine kit
- Sewing machine in good working order, Nothing fancy is required – a basic mechanical machine (budget models are around £90 to £120) will allow you to make almost anything with fabric.
- Cables and foot pedal
- Machine manual (essential please)
- Standard presser foot
- Zipper foot
- Buttonhole foot
- At least 5 empty bottom thread bobbins. These are brand or maybe even machine specific so please ensure the ones you bring are correct for your machine.
All items that can be marked as your property should be labelled clearly, to avoid mistakes when tidying up at the end of class.
If your sewing machine is vintage or well loved and could do with a tune-up, you should have it serviced before class begins. Pembertons in Stirling offer this service, and your sewing machine can be left with Bluebell Design for collection by them. Please see the Machine Servicing page on this website for full details.