Hey Everyone, welcome back to Cool Tool Thursday.

A must in every quilter’s toolbox is pins. There are so many available and all seem to have a different use.

Flat Head or Flower Pins

The most common pin that a quilter will use is a flat head or flower pin like these ones. Yes, the head is shaped like a flower and they come in a variety of colours. These are the pins most widely used to pin pieces together when sewing. They are long and easy to remove as they come near the foot of the machine. As well they do not seem to get hung up on the machine as your feed the fabric along. Never do you want to sew over a pin – just ask my husband. [Editor’s Note: Yeah, just ask me. Oops. Sorry, babe.] The flower pins have plastic heads and will melt if the iron gets to them.

Flat head pins

Glass Headed Pins

Glass headed pins are also great for pinning pieces together and bonus with them is that because the head is glass they won’t melt when the iron touches them. I have several sets of these in varying lengths. I find they work great to hold pieces together when I creating art quilts as they are very sharp.

Short shank glass headed pins

Long shank glass headed pins

Fork Pins

One of my all time favourite pins for pinning seams together are fork pins. As their name suggests these pins have two prongs which sit on either side of the seams and nothing moves which means that the seams match perfectly. Watch out they are very sharp.

Fork pins

Appliqué Pins

Appliqué Pins are tiny, little pins only about a centimetre in length that come with either a blunt or a round head. I use these to pin little pieces of paper to strips that are numbered in order to keep the strips organised. I also use them to pin things to my portable design wall as they go into the styrofoam perfectly. And yes they can be used for hand appliqué but I have not as I do not do hand appliqué – well once and that was enough.

Round headed applique pins

Blunt headed applique pins

T Pins

They look exactly as named like the letter T. T pins are thick pins which work great for attach your work to a foam core design wall. They are not flimsy and are easy to pin into the stiff foam core.

T pins

There are many, many more pins out there and these are just a few found in my tool box that I use on a regular basis. What pins do you have in your tool box?

Happy Quilting!

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I shared this on Craft Sew Create and Textile Diva.