Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Cutting edge of embroidery

Scissors
You can't do embroidery without scissors. Unless you use a knife or maybe your teeth! So let's talk about scissors this week.

As you can probably tell from the photo I like the Fiskars scissors. The small pair on the left are my embroidery scissors. The pair with the blue handles are also embroidery scissors, but I must admit that I'm pretty disappointed with them. They don't cut very well, boo! So I'll stick with the Orange Wonder. ;-)

It's important to look after your scissors, in particular to not use them for anything else than their intended purpose: cutting thread/fabric. So I've tied a bit of thread on the embroidery scissors, and a bit of fabric on the fabric scissors so it's obvious that these are special scissors. And I've informed the husband that these may never be used for cutting paper etc, because that will make them dull.

Am I the only one who is so particular about scissors? Do you have a favourite pair of scissors? How do you keep them sharp and ready for action?

10 comments:

  1. I found the perfect pair of scissors, of course I donot have just one pair, may be 6 little and sharp ones, 2 pinking shears and 1 big one exclusively for fabric,and finally other 4 big ones which are used for anything. But coming back to the perfect ones, they are really small, they have soft handles and you can use them even on fabric, really useful for applique, they are just great, got the advice from a nice quilting shop owner,if you want to take a look, they are by Karen Kay Buckley

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    1. Ohh! I may just have to check those out - soft handles sounds really nice!

      And I have several pairs of scissors too, for different purposes. :-)

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  2. My Mum kindly spent a small fortune on some Milward embroidery scissors. They are great, however, the first time my husband saw them he tried to use them to cut his toenails. You could hear me scream several doors away.

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    1. Eep! I have yet to scream at my husband for abusing my scissors, but there has been occasion for stern looks! ;-)

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  3. I made the dramatic and in some close friend's view controversial decision to ditch scissors for cutting out fabric in favour of a rotary cuter years ago, and have never looked back! I do however have an enormous collection of smaller scissors.

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    1. Using rotary cutters makes perfect sense! Although how do you deal with odd shapes? Does the rotary work for those as well?

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  4. My favourites are the swan ones with a really long point, unfortunately dropped them on a hard floor recently and blunted the end which was a bit of a disaster

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    Replies
    1. Are those the ones that look like a bird? That's what my grandmother always used when embroidering. :-)

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  5. I think the bird scissors are supposed to be storks. I do have favorite scissors, I also have a favorite pair of snips that I use. I use the snips more often, for snipping floss, the scissors I use when I need to snip floss, and need a pointy tip. I got them both in a museum store, the kind of museum where the docents dress up in period costume and teach you how it used to be. The snips (no pivot, shaped like a bird beak) were made by the blacksmiths there I think. :-) I LOVE them both, I also have spare pairs of each in the drawer of my treadle. The snips are not pointy, so no biggie if I drop them. I have dropped my pointy ones before also, and no biggie for those either. I have epilepsy, so my tools need to be able to take a bit of abuse. We also have numerous other pairs of scissors for other things also.

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  6. My favourite embroidery scissors was the storks scissors.
    My first pair of good sewing scissors were Fiskars, and my hubby kept "borrowing" them. Ruined them. I even caught him cutting up steak in the kitchen one day with them!
    My next pair (Fiskars) I always kept hidden in the trenches of my craft room!
    :o)

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