Heartwood Notions

Handmade in a one-person woodshop

Press it flat. Keep it flat.

Hardwood clappers, magnetic pin holders, and hand-turned seam rippers for quilters who know the pressing is half the piecing. Cut, shaped, and sanded one at a time — no two share a grain.

Shop the tools Why a bare sole?
  • Walnut
  • Hard Maple
  • Cherry

Our star block, pieced from the three woods we mill.

The current batch of two-layer clappers laid out on a gray table runner

On the bench now

Seven clappers, no two alike

Every clapper starts on a base of cherry or maple, gets a top pieced from the most figured wood in the shop — spalted, curly, burled — and is weighted so the mass sets the seam, not your arm. Each one is sold exactly as photographed; when it's gone, it's gone.

See the current batch

See everything in the shop →

Why quilters keep a block of wood at the ironing board

Steam in, spring out

Fabric remembers. Press a seam and lift the iron, and the fibers pull back toward where they were. A dense hardwood clapper laid on the hot seam traps the heat and steam while the fibers cool — and cool fibers hold their crease.

Flatter blocks, truer quilts

Seams that stay flat nest better, match better, and quilt better. It's the cheapest accuracy upgrade there is: no batteries, no settings, no learning curve. Set the block on the seam and keep sewing.

Bare where it works, oiled where it shows

The working face of every pressing tool ships bare, because open pores are what drink steam out of a cooling seam. Everywhere your hands go, the wood is dressed with our all-natural oil-and-wax blend — nothing synthetic — to protect it and bring out the figure in the grain.