Sewing Pattern Weights From Tiles

After watching The Great British Sewing Bee and seeing how quick cutting out fabric is if you use a roller cutter and cutting mat, I realised I needed some pattern weights for dressmaking. I managed for a while using my phone, tins of tuna and so on, but wouldn’t it be nice to have a matching set of weights that are the right size and made for the job? Many of the online tutorials make use of large, thick washers, but I couldn’t find any locally for a reasonable price and I didn’t want to pay a hefty postage charge for delivery of a heavy package containing enough washers for a dozen or so weights. The most common alternative method of making your own weights is sewing pyramids and filling them with rice. I didn’t fancy that because rice has a tendency to absorb moisture from the air, and weevils can find their way to it if it’s not in a sealed container.

I toyed with the idea of casting some and went to the garage to look at the date on a half-opened bag of cement we have in there. It had long since expired, but I spotted on a garage shelf the spare wall tiles we had left over from a bathroom refurbishment in the early 2000s. We haven’t needed to use any spares in the 20-odd years since then, and there were plenty of them, so maybe it was time to put one to use.

Tiles are cheap, especially the plain white rectangular ones. If you don’t have your own stock of spares in the garage, ask around neighbours and friends or go to your local tile shop and see if they’ll sell you one or two from a split pack.

1 or 2 large square or rectangular ceramic wall tiles

Weighing scales

A ruler

Something that will mark a tile, such as a Sharpie or chinagraph pencil

A tile cutter – beg, steal or borrow if you don’t own one

A sander, a Dremel with a grinding bit, or a file

Safety glasses and a dust mask

Panel adhesive, tile adhesive or silicone sealant

Scraps of woven cotton fabric, eg an old shirt

Scraps of medium weight fabric with stretch, eg cotton/Lycra jersey

PVA glue (white glue)

An old paintbrush for applying PVA

A sewing machine, ideally an overlocker

Sewing thread, needle and scissors

To make best use of your tiles, work out what size to cut the individual squares – or they could be rectangles if that works best. Weigh a tile and use that to inform your decision.

My plain white tiles measured 200mm by 250mm (about 8” x 10”) and weighed about 745g (26oz). I figured that if I cut each tile into 50mm (2”) squares (ie getting 4 across the width and 5 along the length, so 20 in total), two of them ought to be heavy enough for a weight at about 75g (3oz). If you feel that’s too light, then either make your squares bigger or plan to stack 3 or 4 squares together rather than just two.

You could also choose to make a mix of larger and smaller weights. Small ones are useful for the narrow or fiddly parts of a garment, such as waistbands and collar points.

When you’ve decided how to cut up your tiles, measure carefully and draw cutting lines on the glazed side with an indelible marker or a chinagraph pencil.

Cutting thinnish ceramic tiles with a tile cutter is fairly straightforward, but it’s a good idea to practise first if you’ve never done it before. Read the instructions that came with the tile cutter. Like cutting glass, the secret is to score the whole length of the cut in one continuous movement, and you should hear the steel cutter crunching through the glazed surface as you do it – if you don’t hear it, you’re not pressing hard enough. Then – without moving the tile - use the lever of the cutter to press down on either side of the score line to snap it cleanly.

I did all the long, lengthwise cuts first and then cut those strips down into individual squares. The whole job only took a few minutes per tile.

Start by stacking as many squares on top of each other as you need for each weight. Arrange them so that the top and bottom of the pile is a glazed surface for smoothness, and because the rough undersides are best placed in the middle of the stack where they’ll help to stop one square sliding around on its neighbour. If your squares vary in size at all, try to choose ones that are all the same size for each weight you assemble.

Next stick the squares in the stack to each other using a suitable glue such as tile adhesive, panel adhesive or silicone sealant. Put a few blobs between each pair of squares, line them up carefully and then leave them to dry with a weight on top.

Then you need to round the 4 corners of each square weight to stop them poking through their fabric covers. I did that using a disc sander but a belt sander could be used instead, or a hand-held sander, a grinding stone in a Dremel or even a metal file. Wear eye protection and a dust mask because ceramic dust and tiny shards of glaze will be produced. Rinse the weights afterwards to get the dust off then leave them to dry.

Tiles are rather rough on the edges and underside - not what you want to be sliding around on delicate pattern tissue. They need to be wrapped or encased in something smooth. We’ll start with a base layer before adding a pretty cover.

Tear cotton fabric into strips that are as wide as the height of the weights plus about ½” (12mm). Or you could use ready-cut, unfolded bias binding like I did – because I happened to have some of the right width – but it’s probably better to have a torn edge because it creates less of a ridge and is easier to stick down. Cut the strips into lengths that will go round the edge of a weight twice with a small overlap.

Dilute some PVA (aka white glue) to make it runny enough to soak into the fabric strips easily. Paint it onto the edges of a weight and wrap a fabric strip around it, keeping it taut. When you’ve gone round all 4 sides once, paint more glue onto the full width of the remainder of the strip and stick that down around the edges too, pushing the end down well. Then smooth down the free edge of the fabric strip onto one of the square faces of the weight, brushing on more glue as needed and folding the corners neatly. Place the weight with that side down onto an impermeable surface such as a polythene bag and stick the other edge of the fabric down onto the top face in the same way.

I found that the wet glue held the fabric strip down onto the top face of the weight without needing to be held in place while it dried, but another piece of polythene with something to weigh it down will do the job otherwise .

When the glue is semi-dry – dry enough for the fabric to be stuck to the weight but not so dry that it is firmly bonded to the polythene - peel off the polythene, stand the weights on their edges and leave them to dry fully, turning them onto a different edge part way through the process.

Now tear some more of the cotton fabric into wider strips, the same width as the square sides of the weights. They need to be long enough to wrap around the weight (ie the bottom, one side, the top and then the other side) twice with a small overlap again. Glue and wrap a strip in one direction and allow it to dry before gluing and wrapping a second strip at 90° to it. Stagger the overlaps so they aren’t all in the same place. (I used the green bias binding again for the first layer, which was narrower than the weights so I had to do 3 wraps and overlap each one.)

Some commercially available pattern weights have a handle on top to make them easy to pick up. I decided not to include a handle because my weights ended up about 20mm (¾") thick, which is enough to get hold of, and also because I’d rather be able to use them either way up. Larger or thinner weights would benefit from having handles though.

You wouldn’t be reading this if you weren’t a sewist so I won’t go into much detail on how to make the outer covers. I stitched a long strip of cotton jersey with Lycra (Spandex) into a tube on the overlocker, right sides together, having first wrapped a piece of the fabric around a weight to work out what width was needed. The cover needs to be stretched to get it on so that it fits tightly and smoothly with no wrinkles. Then I cut the tube into lengths, again using the overlocker so that one end of each length was closed. If you want to add a fabric or tape loop on the top of each cover as a handle, stitch it on at this point.

With a cover turned right side out, slip it over a weight and pull the open end away from the weight a little to stretch the fabric smooth. Trim off any excess fabric if necessary then tuck in the raw edges neatly and stitch up the opening by hand.

Repeat for all the other weights.

That's it, job done! Although you could sew a little bag to store them in.