The roller blind is attached to my built in shelves behind my cutting table. When I need to take pictures, I just pull out the blind and clamp the end to the edge of the table with some simple spring clamps. Then I have a few very bright LED desk lamps which I bought at the dollar store (yes, these were a dollar apiece, and they are EXCELLENT lamps!). I put white grocery bags over the lamps to act as a light diffuser; looks ghetto but works great. One lights the backdrop while the other two light the mask.

Here’s what the roller blind looks like without all the paraphernalia. It gives a nice, even white background, and I just pull it out far enough so that it naturally creates that gentle curve that makes the photographs look a lot more professional.

Here’s what the area looks like when the blind is rolled back up—it basically disappears! The lights go into a plastic milk crate which slides underneath my spare sewing machine table. Basically, the whole system is a photo studio that sets up in minutes and takes up practically no space when you don’t need it—win/win!

Tools of the Trade

Day Twenty-One: Cutting Table

I used to own this cutting table from JoAnn’s. It was nice (although not $200 nice! I surely didn’t pay that much for it!)—it has two sides that can be folded up or down independently, so you can have two sizes of cutting areas or fold them both down and store the table away. I managed to knock the thing over one time, and it was wonky after that. It was also a bit low for my comfort, as I’m 6’1″. So I decided to make my own cutting table!

I googled a number of tutorials on how to build your own work table, and ended up taking a couple of elements from different ones, and added a few of my own touches. I’m not an experienced woodworker or carpenter, but I managed to get everything together pretty well (with a few bumps along the way!) It’s primarily constructed of 2x4s, so it’s good and solid. It’s also bigger than the doorway, so I constructed the whole thing inside the room, and now I can never move into another house.

Tools of the Trade

Day Twenty: Power Strip

I have a number of electrical items that I use occasionally (irons, postal scales, thread winders, etc), and they’re stored away until I need to use them. I got tired of bending down to find an outlet to plug them into, so I bought this Stanley SurgeMax power strip. The thing that made this one particularly useful is that it has mounting brackets built into it, so I screwed it to the edge of one of my built-in shelves, around waist height. This put the outlets in a much more convenient location, and I can quickly get power to my tools quite easily. (It also makes a nice little shelf for my tiny things, like 15 cm rulers.)

Tools of the Trade

Day Nineteen: Lightboard

When I was growing up, my mom owned a needlepoint store, and she drew a lot of original art for canvasses. She had a light table that she made herself, to help her trace her art. It was basically a light bulb fixture inside a wooden box that had a plexiglass top. You’d lay your art on top, a blank piece of paper on top of that, and then you’d turn on the lamp and the light would shine through both layers of paper and let you trace the image on the bottom sheet, making changes to the art as you wished. Much later, technology had advanced, and one Christmas I got a fancy LED light board as my main gift. They were fairly expensive (and at the time, only available at fancy art stores), but now they were much more portable, flatter, brighter, gave a more dispersed light, and didn’t get hot! It was a miracle! I still have that board, but now that time has passed and prices have dropped on LED components, I now use an inexpensive A4-sized LED board that’s super-thin, super-bright, super-handy, AND is rechargeable via usb, so I don’t have to fumble with wires! Brilliant! I just stash it on a shelf where I can grab it, use it, and shove it right back again. I use it just as my mom used her old light table, to trace and modify art, and also to align multipart patterns that are too big to print all on one sheet (as seen here).

Tools of the Trade

Day Eighteen: Rolling Ruler

This is one of those products that I searched for forever, but couldn’t find for the longest time because it didn’t exist. It’s a simple device, and very useful, so you’d think it would be fairly common, but it turns out it didn’t come to be until Kickstarter was around. It’s called the Curve Runner, and it’s a rolling ruler, basically just a circular ruler mounted on a handle grip. You roll it along a shape and it gives you a measure of the total distance. I find it invaluable when I’m creating patterns and I need to make sure the length of the seam line of one piece matches the length of the corresponding line on another piece where they’re sewn together. I used to clumsily try to do this with a tape measure, but this tool makes it MUCH easier! This one is in centimetres because I try to do everything metric, but it’s also available in inches.

I used to store my pattern pieces in paper envelopes of various sizes. I found that bugs liked them, little patterns got stuck in them, and various other ills. Then I discovered clear folder and my life changed for the better! You can see exactly what’s in them, they lay nice and flat, patterns go in and come out easily, and they’re quite inexpensive. In Japan, you can even get them at the ¥100 stores. In the USA you can order them online from Amazon or whatever. I use A4 for most things, and these can be filed away in most any container that is designed for LTR sized materials. I also have some B4 for bigger things, and then some A6 and B6 to keep tiny stuff from being lost. The latter two can be tossed inside an A4 for storage.

Tools of the Trade

Day Sixteen: Surgical Tools

Surgical tools can be very useful when sewing. Hemostats, forceps, or clamps (the three items on the left) can help you clean out hard-to-reach areas on the inside of your sewing machine. More than once I found a piece of fluff gumming up the works in my bobbin area, that I couldn’t reach with my fingers. Forceps easily reached in there and removed the offending material. My dad had a lot of these laying around the house when I was growing up; seems he had a bit of a roach problem. Surgical scissors (the rightmost three items) are extremely sharp and can be helpful in sewing. The first pair pictured are designed for removing stitches, and have a little hook blade at the end; they’re excellent for seam ripping. The other two pairs have curved blades, making it easier to trim surface fabric without cutting the fabric underneath.

Tools of the Trade

Day Fifteen: Hardware Press

I like to use grommets in the holes on my laceplates, and I sometimes have to use snaps for things like chinstraps. There’s a number of tools on the market to set grommets and/or snaps, and there’s a range of reliability and quality as well. The leftmost tool is just a simple setter and anvil that came with a bargain assortment of grommets. The next one is a bit more professional, with a solid + hefty anvil that can accommodate a range of sizes of snaps. The plierlike device is what I usually recommend to people who are dipping their toe in the craft: it’s called the Crop-O-Dile, and it can punch two different sized holes and set a number of grommets and snaps. It’s simple to use, and produces consistent results. The next item is a professional grommet setter from Japan. The last item is a drive punch, which is how I prefer to make the holes for my grommets and snaps.