Sempstress

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This is another of those “Duh!” tricks to speed up your sewing. I’ve been making silly little dolly chemises, and I keep running into areas where I need to sew 1/4″ by hand to close a band, or finish a sleeve vent. This happens in normal sewing, too, but you’re usually looking at 2″ or so. Normally, you have to grab a thread, thread a needle, knot the end of the thread, find someplace relatively hidden to lodge it, and then you get to actually start sewing. We can cut out at least two of those steps.

Every finished seam comes with two lovely thread "tails". We normally just cut them off.

But if I only cut one off....

...I can thread a needle with the remaining tail, and use this to sew the end of my little cuff shut.

It's already secured at the end of the seam, so no knots and no finding a hidden place to start. Just thread and sew....

I have to roll both sides of this sleeve vent to seal them. Conveniently, I have to tails coming out of my seam....

All you need to do is make sure you’re leaving yourself enough of a thread tail. That’s not so hard. I’m not recommending this for anything over 3-4″ of work, but for those stupid little piddly finishing bits, it’s not a bad time-saver.