Best pins?

Depends what you want them for... I prefer pins that bend rather than break when I hit them while sewing! Fewer bits to dig out of the sewing machine!

For general sewing I like Prym (used to be Neweys) Extra Long Extra fine, which I buy in 250g boxes... For quilting I like different pins, and for using with fleece and other thick fabrics, yet another type... Bit like asking which thread is best: depends what you want them for! ;)

That what I've been using but I find that they bend too easily when trying to pin through things like zipper tape and about every tenth pin isn't sharp enough to easily pierce microfiber. It's driving me buggy. I'd hoped there was high quality, supersharp brand I hadn't heard of. Oh well. Thanks anyway.

Laura B. (Who will never sew with microfiber again)

Re: Best pins?

so you pin your pieces together before sewing? that's so genius! (to me...although i'm sure this is standard practice =D)

Try lace pins. Smaller and finer...

For zips, try some of the glass headed pins available.

Thanks for all the ideas guys. :-)

Laura B.

Depends... Easy bits, no - just shove em & go! Tricky bits I pin. Really so**ing okkard bits I baste! Like the waistcoat pocket welts I was making today on a knit velour... Stable knit, almost no stretch, but I ended up re-cutting one front, and basting the bits because it wanted to scoot about! Even basted, it moved... Looks OK, but I'd have preferred it not to move at all!

Started with sew-in interfacing and pins, finally did it with fused interfacing and basting!

The trick with pins is to put them im at right angles to the seam. That way the foot just walks over them. The roller foot doesn't like them so well, and I think that was part of my problem: velour = roller foot: roller foot rejects pins!

This is how I pin, as well, but I try never to sew over them. It's not especially good for the machine, and if the needle does hit a pin, it's not especially good for the sewist!

Actually, I've gotten so that I don't pin nearly as much as I used to. Between working with other professionals, Margaret Islander's tips, and Teri Jones's (she's a popular denizen of the AOL sewing boards who taught at the university level), I have taught myself to use pins sparingly. Things go much faster without them, too.

Karen Maslowski in Cincinnati

The trick with pins is to put them in exactly where the stitching will go, with the heads toward you so you can pull them out as they approach the foot. The little wave that goes ahead of the foot tends to flatten out when it approaches a stitching-line pin. It tends to break and make a pleat when it approaches a crosswise pin.

In really awkward places where you have to put the pins nose to tail, you can hold a pin with eyebrow tweezers and let the machine pull the fabric off it. Cuts *way* down on the need to baste.

I do use crosswise pins when I stitch elastic in a highly-stretched condition. Since a crosswise pin controls only a point on the stitching line, it doesn't care whether the elastic is stretched or not.

Joy Beeson

I just learned this trick a few years ago. To think of all the years I had crosswise pins and felt I had to baste!

It's a good method until you are in a serious hurry and don't have time to take the pins out. I find the right angled pins work best for me, but i use very fine pins that rarely catch in the feed dogs. Doesn't work so well with the glass head type.