Clever clever idea Pamela. Going to copy this asap.
Annie

Impressive.
Annie

I am going to try this out...thanks!

After ripping out a seam, use a pencil eraser to rub over the threads. It removes them like butter! Put a peice of the loopy side of velcro to the end of a yard stick, use it to remove all the clipped threads from your quilt and to remove all the lost threads from the floor around your sewing machine. It saves having to bent over!

Here is a way to make your own really sturdy pattern paper. Take two sheets of the inexpensive white tissue paper, the kind you get at the dollar tree and a white plastic trash bag. cut open the trash sack to get one layer sheet. sandwich tissue, plastic,tissue and iron with a hot iron. Be careful to trim bag to tissue size or the iron will melt the plastic and you will have to do a clean up. The resulting tissue is very strong, it can be cut or torn but is not fragile. It is translucent and you can easily trace through it. It is great for transferring multi size patterns as you can trace off the size you need and save the original. Also if you want you can use an existing tissue pattern as one of the layers and thus make it stronger for extended use.
Other uses of this idea that I have come up with is to have the top layer be fabric. When I was book binding having the glue leak through was a real problem. Book cloth is expensive and rather boring. By doing this I can have any kind of book cloth I want. I think if you were covering boxes this would be handy too. Also if you are crafting with fragile or making items that need a sturdier paper this is a great solution. Once I sandwiched the tissue with maps to make lampshades. The are still going strong. I also have sandwiched that shiny iridescent tissue with white tissue to make a sturdy paper to cover journals. Works great. I haven't tried it but I am thinking to use two lightweight fabrics with the plastic and seeing if I can make a moisture resistant fabric for lunch bags and such. Easier to sew than oilcloth and cheaper than vinyl coated cloth.[/QUOTE]

Could you maybe use the super market plastic bags for this? Especially if you were doing the fabric on top and the tissue on the bottom? Just wondering.

great idea

Gesh....36 pages later, finally to the end (for the time being anyways) I have read some fantastic ideas. Thanks to all of you.

Instead of tracing your pattern on interfacing, just use iron on interfacing on the back of the patterns. No need to trace and saves time. My patterns have lasted for years doing this.

Thought my Bernina needed repair until my daughter told me about using a cone and now I use coffee mugs for my other 2 machines
I am now going to switch to small jars or bottles, sounds like an even better idea. Thanks.

if you use fusible interfacing you can iron your pattern onto it and save the tracing step. I've done this for years and it works great.