LDH Midnight Edition Fabric Shears - 1.5 Year Review & Maintenance Routine (+ Videos!)
Transparency notice: This blog post is kindly sponsored by LDH Scissors! They sent me the tools I will discuss in this article for free, and paid for me to write this blog post. I value your trust, and all opinions are honest and my own. Links are not affiliate links, and I earn no commission from them.
Hello! Today I have another in depth product review for you. The lovely people over at LDH Scissors sent me their 9” Midnight Edition fabric shears a year and a half ago, and they have quickly become one of my favourite sewing tools. In a moment of sheer luck and coincidence, Ursula contacted me to see if I would be interested in writing a 1-year-in review for them on the exact day I thought to myself “Hey, I should write a review on these scissors!” Of course I said yes, and here we are. In this post, I’ll go over how I take care of my fabric scissors to keep them in good shape, as well as show you how they perform after 1.5 years of consistent use.
Caring for your fabric scissors
Before I started following LDH Scissors on Instagram, I had no idea that scissors required regular maintenance and care. One of the things I so love about LDH Scissors is how much they emphasise the importance of taking proper care of your tools to ensure their longevity. They now have a free maintenance guide you can download upon signing up to their newsletter, as well as this article on their website and this guide on Instagram.
I wipe my scissors after each time I use them using a scrap piece of fabric, so that the lint from the fabric doesn’t accumulate on the blades and in the button. I must admit that I’ve been a little negligent about oiling them regularly, but I finally set aside some time the other day to properly oil them and - oh. my. god. What a difference it makes!
I used the oil I normally use for oiling my sewing machine and overlocker (this one by Singer), but you can use any kind you have at hand. As the bottle comes with a small, precise tip, I directly squeezed some oil into the button, and used a scrap piece of linen to rub it into the blades and the button. I tried my best to push the oil into the center of the button, and worked it in by slowly opening and closing the blades. Once I was satisfied with the saturation of the shears, I left them alone somewhere my cats couldn’t reach them for 8 hours or so.
Once the 8 hours were up, I used a clean paper towel to thoroughly wipe off the excess oil, so that it wouldn’t transfer to my fabric and stain it. Be careful when you’re doing this - these scissors are seriously sharp and I did manage to slice my finger in the process :’)
Immediately after finishing this process, I used my scissors to cut into two layers of seriously thick wool tweed and they glided like butter! They cut even more smoothly and effortlessly than they usually do, and I’m a total oiling-your-scissors advocate now!
The only other bit of maintenance I did on them was to gently tighten the button. At one point I noticed that the button became a little loose over time, causing some misalignment in the blades and giving me a hard time cutting fabric. I would go to cut fabric and the blades would almost turn diagonally in my hands, right as I was closing them. Imagine trying to cut fabric using those kid scissors that are always a little misaligned and banged up, that’s sort of what it felt like. I quickly realised that this was probably due to the button coming loose, so I gave it a quick twist to the right, and now it’s back to its perfect self. I know that the button and the alignment of the blades are delicate matters, so do this at your own risk. I’m just sharing my own experience and experiments with you :o)
While we’re on the subject, here are some lightning round care tips: Never throw your scissors onto hard surfaces! Protect the button at all costs! Only use them to cut fabric! And don’t do any air-cutting! Here’s another great article from LDH with explanations for all these tips.
Performance
As I said, I’ve been using these scissors quite consistently over the past year and a half. I mainly work with natural fibres; mostly with linen, cotton, and wool, and I used them on fabrics with a variety of thicknesses and levels of slipperiness. Perhaps my favourite thing about these scissors is their versatility - they work equally great on multiple layers of thick, heavyweight wool, and slippery silk linings.
Compared to my other fabric scissors (most notably my Kai N5210 8” ones) the LDH pair is much slicker and slipperier in its feel, meaning it literally glides through fabric. When I first got them I found this feature a little challenging, and felt like I couldn’t be as precise in my cuts as when I’m using scissors that have a bit more grip and friction in the blades. However, now that I’ve been using them for a while, I just love this quality about them. It makes cutting much gentler on my hands, as I don’t need to exert as much force even when I’m cutting through layers of wool. No more hand cramps!
One of the features I was most excited about a year and a half ago was the sharpness of the tip of the blades, and I’m really happy to see that it remained just as sharp and precise to this day. This was my main complaint with my Kai pair, I felt like I couldn’t be as accurate in my cuts due to their dull tip. The LDH pair is extremely sharp all throughout the blades. As you can see in the samples below, the LDHs produce a much cleaner cut in the fabric - especially at the tip.
The first set of cuts are made with the LDH pair, and the second set of cuts with the Kai pair.
Finally, here are some short videos of how the scissors perform on different fabrics:
Cutting through 2, 3, and 6 layers of heavyweight wool tweed.
Cutting through 2, 4, and 8 layers of medium to heavy-weight cotton twill.
Cutting through 2, 4, and 8 layers of medium weight linen.
And here’s how sharp the tips of the blades are.
Overall, as you might be able to tell, I’m a huge fan of these shears. Cutting the fabric has never been my favourite part of garment sewing, but these scissors make it as fun and painless as it could be. There’s something really satisfying about seeing them chew through layers upon layers of thick wool or heavy denim, and I can wholeheartedly recommend them to any sewist or other fibre artist looking to get a nice, durable, sharp pair of fabric shears. Plus - they are easily the most beautiful and cool-looking scissors I have ever seen!
If you have any specific questions about these scissors, or even some of the other tools from LDH, feel free to leave them in the comments! I would love to help out if I can :) Happy cutting!