Tailor's Tacks - The Sane Way to Mark Your Fabric

Marking fabric is my least favorite part of sewing clothes. Pinning patterns, cutting fabric, sewing seams—all good. Marking where darts go and where zippers start and where sleeves are eased in is tedious work.

Earlier this year when I started sewing from vintage patterns, I ran across a few cryptic references to using tailor's tacks to mark fabric. These were sometimes accompanied by an obscure illustration that made no sense to my brain. So I ignored tailor's tacks and continued to mark my fabric with marking pencils in white, yellow, and gray. These pencils are hard to sharpen without breaking the lead. The lead breaks easily while they are in use. And often the markings were so faint I may as well have saved the trouble and not made them.

Yesterday I started a new dress and when I got to the stage of marking the fabric, I decided I really wanted to see if these elusive tailor's tacks would make the job easier. So I popped on the interwebs and googled it. I found a couple of good articles, a series of photos from someone's Flickr account, and a great YouTube tutorial (bonus for the British accent—it always makes someone sound like they know what they're talking about).

Let me tell you, I don't think I'll ever go back. It's easy, you don't risk having any marks seen on the finished garment, and it's quick. Here's the tutorial from YouTube that helped me if you want to check it out.