I’m just like you…I struggle to find time to sew, too.

I don’t have kids and a family to take care of (yet), but my time is in short supply when it comes to sewing. Here’s my reality: I have a full-time job, my commute is like a part-time job (four hours a day, no joke), I’m going to school for my MBA, and oh yeah, I have normal chores and stuff around the house that I need to do. Plus, I teach a fitness class on the side each week that I have to prep and practice for. Whew! It’s a miracle that anything gets sewn, really, when I think about it.

Because of all of the above life changes over the last several years, I don’t crank out as many garments as I used to. But, when I do have a bit of time here and there, I try to make the most of it. Here’s some tricks I use that you might find useful in your own sewing time.

1. Batch-cut several projects at once – I have a small sewing room that requires me to rearrange the furniture to get my collapsable sewing table out. So, when I have my table out and all of my tools at the ready, and I’m in the frame of mind that I’m cutting out fabric, I try to cut out more than one project. Cutting out fabric is a task I really don’t enjoy, so if I can just do as much as possible at once and be done with it, I try to. The benefit is that I have multiple projects ready to go when I have a few minutes to spare
2. Take advantage of even a few minutes of spare time – need to thread your serger for your next project? Or, maybe you have a few minutes free for sewing some darts or simple seams? Do it. Sure, it may not feel as satisfying as sitting down for a real sewing session of a few hours, but it’s amazing how those minutes add up and a project comes together. I tried this experiment a few years ago after reading Nancy Zieman’s “10-20-30 Minutes to Sew” and it’s something I’ve adopted ever since I made this Ginger Skirt.
3. Have all of your materials ready to go – a good habit I try to maintain is pre-washing all of my fabrics as soon as they come home with me. It doesn’t happen all of the time, but I try to throw my fabrics in the wash so when I’m ready to pull them out of my closet for a project, they’re ready to be cut out and sewn. If I’m also planning on making a project coming up and don’t have time to get to the store, I’ll look online for the supplies I need and get them ready to ship in time for my next sewing date in my sewing room. A lot time these days my supplies come from shopping online, which is much more convenient with my schedule than trying to hunt them down at my local fabric stores.
4. Use a rotary cutter and large pattern weights – this goes back to my first bullet point, but it’s the easiest and the fastest to cut out projects when I use a mat and rotary cutter. There are some fabrics where it’s really the best option to cut them out with a rotary cutter, like slippery knits, but it’s so much more accurate and faster than a pair of scissors. I’m also a convert to pattern weights instead of pins for securing pattern pieces. I’ll measure out and pin down the grainline of pattern pieces to make sure I have them straight, but then I’ll use weights to hold the tissue pieces in place on the fabric. You don’t have to use anything fancy, I use giant washers I bought at Home Depot that I covered in washi tape.
5. Press your pieces in batches – I just used this strategy for a top I have coming to the blog next week! Instead of getting up every time I finish sewing a seam to press it open or to one side, I wait until I have a few to press and do them all at once. As long as waiting to press a seam doesn’t interfere with sewing another one (think of an intersecting seam, or a dart and a waistband seam, for example), I try to do this as much as possible.
6. Keep a running list of your sewing queue – this one is a fave of mine. I use Evernote to keep track, on a seasonal basis, of patterns I want to make and fabrics I have in my stash that would work with the pattern. I also use a special notation to call out projects that are easy to whip-up quickly vs projects that will take more time due to needing to make a muslin to get the fit right. It helps me prioritize when I suddenly have some free time and am not sure what to make next.

I hope some of these methods help to speed up your sewing time! Let me know if any of these work for you, or how you sew as efficiently as possible. I need all the help I can get, hah!