I use bicycle bands (cheaper than the quilt clips but the same thing) for rolling my quilt when I meander stitch on my sewing machine. Somebody turned me on to using carpet cutters instead of buying the expensive rotary cutting blades. To me they work just fine but I know lots of people don't much like them. I use a mirror from an old compact (make-up item) to change the lightbulb on my machine and I use a pencil eraser to hold my needle when I change it so it don't fall into the machine.