My Most Days Sewing Kit

(I guess I can’t really call it my Every Day Sewing Kit, since I technically don’t carry it every day.)

I’ve been using this Jack Wolfskin toiletry bag for almost a decade. (Considering my toiletry kit for a week can fit in my hand, this thing is way too big for its intended purpose.) Needing something to keep all my sewing stuff in, I looked in the gear bin, and this seemed appropriate.

I added some tabs with metal sliders so that I could mount it to the outside of a pack, if I needed some extra space in the bag. 

In this case a Kifaru E&E.

Looping them through a PALS channel – one of the dozens of ways to mount pouches.

Another way to mount them in a Kifaru pack is from the Lock&Load Loops.

The interior isn’t really ideal for its intended purpose, but it has sufficed.

In the little pockets at the top that are meant for bottles of shampoo and the like, is where I keep spools of thread and also containers of needles.

The 5 at the front are Coats upholstery thread, and the 2 at the top are Coats all-purpose thread. Coats is infinitely better than Guttermans.

The upholstery I use all the time, and the all-purpose only for very light use. Mainly the black and the brown, since the other three come out almost white in use. They’re handy though when I want to have two distinct stitch lines, if they’re really close to one another. One dark, one light. If one is only a temporary stitch, meant to be removed later for instance.

I use needles mainly out of the black topped case, and then the blue one. The yellow topped case has small needles good only for very light work. The red topped container actually has sewing machine needles.

And I recommend that you find John James needles, as they are of a much higher quality. Not too surprisingly, the quality of needles has really gone down hill in the last few years, as everything is moved off to China to be produced.

There was a hook that you could hang the toiletry kit up with, which I promptly removed and replace with a split key ring. Attached to it is a squeeze light and a Victorinox Ambassador.

Gift from my sister in law from the Home Hardware she works at in lovely Digby, Scova Notia.

Oh, and a note for any aspiring sewers. Cut your thread. I can’t stress that enough! Cut it with scissors. Don’t wind the thread between two hands and yank it to break it. Don’t gnaw on it with your teeth. Don’t saw away at it with a dull pocket knife. Cut it with scissors!

(Slight tangent here - I see all these suggestions on forums about sewing kits (often from people who have no idea what the hell they’re talking about) about things that should go in a sewing kit. “You should put some uber high-tech mono-filament line in there. It has like some crazy high breaking strength!” If they had tried it they wouldn’t suggest it. And if Kifaru doesn’t sew their bags with anything other than 92lb. Mil-Spec thread, I figure that’s a clue.)

Along those lines I have people telling me that I should get one of those needle threaders. You know the little diamond of wire with a cameo of a woman on the handle part. I’m sure they work, but I have threaded a needle, thousands, tens of thousands of times without one. Hhhmmmhhh... Maybe I have the patience of a saint, eyes like a hawk, the steady hands of a surgeon, but I have never had a problem threading a needle. And I have done it a lot. Get one if you want, but I think the main reason why I never have a problem threading a needle is because I cut my thread. It is a nice, clean end, very easy to fit through the eye. When you gnaw it, break it, the end is very rough, hence difficult and frustrating to thread. Cut your needle with a sharp pair of scissors!

In the centre divider are four elastic loops in which I have binder clips and safety pins.

Small binder clips.

Medium binder clips. Both sizes are really handy.

A whole lot of safety pins that I rarely ever use.

Another thing I use a lot are rubber thimbles, the type you find in an office supply store.

In the mesh pocket I keep a miscellany of items. Some are in there more or less permanently, and others are slated for the particular project I happen to be working on.

The tape measure, Olfa knife, grey pencil and sharpener, rubber thimbles and sewing gauge are some of my go to tools, whereas the seam tape, 550 cord, GrimLocs, Siamese Slik-Clips, button and cord lock were in there on the day I took the picture. A month later it would be a different assortment of odds and ends.

There are a couple of other tools I use for my sewing projects, but they are kept in a tool box at home. A plain old paper punch and a drill bit used in printing for drilling holes in paper (the latter being a tube with beveled ends). Both are used to punch holes in material for drain holes. I also have a seam ripper and a Stewart Speedy Stitcher. None of them are  tools I use on a regular basis. For the most part, I prepare the project I’m working on at home. Cut the material, and the webbing, and singe the ends. Cut the holes, singe them. Cut anything else I might need, singe it. For years I spent hours a day commuting to work, so this kit worked nicely to contain and carry everything. It could hold all the components of whatever project I was working on, and hold all the tools I would need to work on it. 


I commuted to work in Toronto on the train, and that was part of the reason why I cut and singed everything ahead of time. The cutting, well, I can’t very well spread out a few yards of Cordura on the train. But the singeing was done, because it smells really obnoxious, and also because I imagine that a very large guy, with tattoos and piercings, wearing army pants and a freaky tattoo shop shirt and working on something somewhat military-ish looking, might induce panic amongst the Oakvillians if they saw him lighting the ends of  para-cord. Best to do that in the privacy of my own home. 


I had plans to take out the interior and build a better set up, more organized and compartmentalized, but given the back log of other DIY projects I have, it always got pushed back to some point well into the future. Finally created the Sew’mups. Much better.