If I Only Had 5 Items to Make a Garment With, What Would They Be?

Let’s say we are all going on a sewing cruise to a tropical island together and we can only take five sewing items with us, what will your five sewing items be? What would you choose?

First, let us have a few rules. These are the items that are already included on top of our five items. You will be provided with:

• Fabric because you cannot sew a garment without fabric
• Thread
• Standard stock size pattern.

What else? What other five things would you choose to sew with to make the garment?

Here is mine, let us get the first obvious one out of the way. I am going to pick my sewing machine. I like hands-on finishing, but I do not like hand sewing seams.

Now it gets a little bit more interesting. My second item is Tailor’s chalk. So, I would use this to trace out my pattern pieces and for marking and notches and all the things that I need.

And so, my third item is a tape measure. A tape measure is important for measuring pattern pieces as well as taking body measurement. I would use it to measure my body, measure the pattern pieces and then draw the alterations I wanted to make right onto the fabric using the tailor’s chalk.

The fourth item I would take in my suitcase on the sewing cruise would be my shears. So obviously we need to cut out the fabric pattern somehow. It would hurt me so much to have to cut the pattern out with my fabric shears. 

And the fifth item that I would choose is my iron, I know that I will make a nice garment if I have my iron and to be able to press everything as I go will make a huge difference to the end garment, even if I must fudge it together with minimal equipment.

Ok, and I want to stow away one more item, and that would be my pins. Even just one pin would be enough to make me happy with the ability to match seams as I sew. I think I would disguise it as a brooch!

What other five items are you taking on our sewing cruise that you can only pick five items to make a garment with? What are yours?