As an online seller chances are you have quickly discovered that the easiest way to replace a missing dress belt is to add a piece of ribbon, however you have also realized that when you cut the ribbon off the spool the edges don’t look very impressive and you’re terrified of the ribbon fraying and the buyer being upset. Here’s how you can stop the ribbon from looking like it’s been run through the washer and dryer a dozen times:

1. Heated Ribbon Cutting Tool

This is made for this exact purpose however the price is all over the map. The super good quality heat sealing fabric tools are $40 - $80 whereas the cheaper ones (like the one shown in the image below) are around $14.

But the good news is that you don’t need to buy an actual fabric sealing tool to prevent ribbon from fraying. Here’s 4 additional options that you might like even more (plus they’re cheaper!)

2. Hot Knife Tool

These are pretty friggin awesome. The kit shown in the image below is only $13 with free shipping! Instead of using scissors to cut the ribbon off the spool you use this bad-ass hot knife and it seals it shut as you cut.

3. Heat Sealing Pen for Wood Burning

All you do is cut your ribbon as usual then run this tool along the edge you want to seal. You can grab these on Amazon for around $10 if you take a moment to look through listings!

4. A Tiny Candle

Yes, seriously. If you don’t want to drop $11 on a super-handy-tool, you can be a boy scout and use fire… in the form of a little tealight candle! Now keep in mind, this is not as easy as using the correct tool… and it’s not nearly as safe either. The upside is that you can purchase a big pack of tealights really cheap and you can actually use them in your home, even when you’re not melting the edge of the ribbon to seal it.

On Amazon you can get around 50 tealights for about $13 if you look for a few minutes. 

5. Lighter

This is an alternative to using the tealight candle mentioned above.  Our family buys lighters by the case because we use them all the time and a huge case of 100 is around $16 on Amazon!  We use them almost daily between lighting our fire pit in our yard, lighting candles or other uses.  

Just like with the tealights you can use these to heat seal the edge of the ribbon.  

6. Hot Scissors Tool

These are a little more difficult to find than the other options listed above but IF you can find quality Hot Scissors, this is absolutely the BEST EVER way to cut ribbon and seal at the same time. The actual name of these is “Electric Tailor Scissors” but it helps if you also search for the word “Heat”, so if you want to look for these you should be searching for “Electric Tailor Scissors Heat”.