This weekend, I was working on a super secret project that will go live on Wednesday. It'll be a special kind of awesome.

But today, today I share with you an important trick that I used on my project so that your sewing involves more joy and less 4 letter words!

So let's take a few steps back before I introduce you to the magic. Do you hate hand basting? I mean Hate HATE hand basting? Because I hate hand basting. I just can't stand it. Crazy much? Maybe. But I've got the tool to get rid of the hand basting. Yes, seriously.

I introduce you to Wonder Tape!



I was first introduced to wonder tape when I was teaching my eldest to sew. She didn't have the patience and hand eye coordination to deal with pins but she REALLY wanted to sew. I had been browsing the internet for "teach your kid to sew" tutorials and one of them mentioned wonder tape. It was the PERFECT tool to get my little girl sewing without dealing with pins. Win/win.

So what is wonder tape? Wonder tape is a double sided tape that will wash out. You can use it on any 2 fabrics to make them stick together. Just like basting stitches.

But I was pretty sure I was too "good" for wonder tape. Because I'm a grown up and I should be hand basting. Right? WRONG! SO SO wrong.

So this past weekend I was sewing in a zipper into a side pocket. The problem was I was using PUL (Polyester Urethane Laminate). I couldn't use pins and I couldn't hand baste because that would put holes in my fabric and then it wouldn't be as water resistant. What was I going to do? Then I remembered I still had wonder tape sitting around.

Now I want to point out that I actually have tested a pattern that suggested using wonder tape. That would be ALL the 5 out of 4 Fleece Patterns. I've got 3 posts on those that I completed without wonder tape. I'm totally kicking myself right now. I could have sewn SO much faster if I had just used the wonder tape.

So all of these were done without wonder tape.
5 out of 4 K2
5 out of 4 Sierra
5 out of 4 Ascent

But this pocket, used wonder tape. It was tape it in, topstitch and done. AND, I used it again to hold my pocket together so that I could stitch it on, because even wonder clips weren't going to hold this together flat the way I needed. Seriously, that easy and that fast. So save yourself a LOT of hand basting and pinning. Buy some wonder tape. Use it instead of hand basting and be happy. It is way faster and you can reposition your fabric a bit before giving a good rub with your hands and it sticking down really well.

Happy sewing!