How and Why to Make a Needle Book

I have to admit that I am not at all careful when it comes to storing my needles for cross stitch, embroidery and hand sewing. Sometimes I will put them back in the package they came in, but just as often I’ll leave them on my desk when I’m done with them, leaving me with no real idea where my needles are when I need them.

The good news is there’s a crafty way to solve this problem and it’s making a needle book.

A needle book can be as simple as a piece of felt folded in half that you stick your needles in for storage, but of course we are crafters, so it’s likely we’re going to want to do a little bit more than that.

I came across a good tutorial from Crewel Ghoul recently that should give you some ideas for how to make and embellish your own needle book.

Hers is made with a couple of sheets of felt but the embellishment really makes it something special. She’s stitched on some ducks and flowers on the front cover, and inside the pockets are made from a vintage handkerchief and some lace, embellished with more stitching.

The outside is finished with blanket stitch and a button closure.

Of course you don’t have to make yours in the same way. You can use leftover bits of fabric in your stash, vintage elements, a favorite button. Use embroidery or cross stitch to decorate the front of the book, or make a collage out of fabric. You could embroider your initials or do a sampler of different stitches. Just whatever sounds fun to you!

Check out the post at Crewel Ghoul to see how it all comes together. Do you have a needle book? Did this inspire you to want to make one? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

[Photo: Crewel Ghoul]

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How to Store Embroidery Needles

A while back I made a little rainbow cross stitch pattern and I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with it, so I turned it into a patch. My idea was that it could be used on a jacket or backpack, or you could add a pin to the back and wear it temporarily on a shirt or elsewhere.

But what if you want to make your design more permanent? Is it possible to turn a piece of cross stitch into an iron-on design?

It turns out yes, it is, and Sirious Stitches has done it so I didn’t have to try to figure it out on my own.

The way they did it was by using HeatnBond, an iron-on adhesive that attaches fabrics without sewing. There was still sewing involved to finish the edges of the cross stitch fabric and make it look like a purchased patch. The post shows how to do this by hand or with your sewing machine. (I just did blanket stitch edging on mine, which doesn’t look like a “real” patch but is also a lot faster.)

Once you have the patch prepared it’s a pretty easy matter of using the fusible adhesive to the back of the patch so you can then iron it onto whatever jacket, pair of jeans, bag or whatever else you might want to add it to.

I guess I’m a little paranoid about the washability of cross stitch projects, though you could hand wash anything with an iron-on cross stitch patch as you might need to with a purchased iron-on patch, anyway. But this does look really cool and is a great option if you know you want to permanently add a cross stitch patch to a garment of bag.

Get the full tutorial over at Sirious Stitches. Would you add an iron-on cross stitch patch to something? I’d love to hear what you would use this technique for!

[Photo: Sirious Stitches]

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