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project: easy felt needle book

DIY Felt Needle Book


After finding my grandma's needle book (or one of them, anyway), I wanted to make one that you could make too. The original was a leather cover, and you could certainly make one with leather if you want. But I went with felt. It really is one of my most favorite materials to work with!

Start to finish, this will take you about 30 minutes tops. Not bad!

DIY Felt Needle Book

Here's what you need:

Felt (I recommend wool felt)
Embroidery floss
Perle Cotton
Scissors (regular and pinking)
Needle (you may want to have both tiny and large)

Needle Book Template PDF

DIY Felt Needle Book

Cut out one cover piece, a needle and pin, and three page pieces. Use a pinking shears to cut one edge of the pages.

Also, cutting these thin shapes for the needle and pin can be tricky. One method you may find helpful is to trace the pattern onto freezer paper and iron the shiny side to your felt. Cut through the felt and paper at the same time, then remove the paper. But if your shapes come out a little "wobbly" don't fret. They can be straightened out as you stitch them down.

DIY Felt Needle Book

Fold the cover piece in half to see where to place the pin and needle. Lay them on the cover so they cross over, then stitch around them with tiny stitches. A small needle works best here.

DIY Felt Needle Book

Stack the three pages and wrap the cover around them. You can pin these to hold it all together, but I found that it wasn't necessary.

DIY Felt Needle Book

Thread a length of perle cotton through a larger sharp needle. Pierce through all the layers of felt near the book "spine", about an inch or so from the top. Leave a tail of a few inches showing at the front.

DIY Felt Needle Book

Bring the needle through to the front, about an inch or so from the bottom edge. Go back through the first hole to the back, then come back to the front through the second hole, as shown above. This will hold everything together nice and securely.

DIY Felt Needle Book

Tighten the thread up, and tie a square knot in the perle cotton. Trim the ends.

DIY Felt Needle Book
DIY Felt Needle Book

Your needle book is ready for pins and needles! The back of your applique will show (although you could fuse some fabric to the inside of the cover to hide it), but it shouldn't be too conspicuous. Sometimes it's nice to see some "behind the scenes" in your work!

DIY Felt Needle Book
DIY Felt Needle Book

There you have it. A simple, swift needle book! Hopefully this will actually help prevent lost pins and needles. The other night, after some late night stitching, I rolled over and found a pin in my bed. I was more than a little thankful that it didn't poke me!

8 comments:

  1. Sooo cute, I love needle books will be adding this to my collection for sure..Thank you for sharing!!

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  2. Adorable! Thanks for sharing!

    -Becca
    Ladyface Blog

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  3. Have you ever sewn felt with waxed floss (Like tooth floss)??? I am wondering if you sewed in a binding stitch (kinda circular around the whole edge) with that stuff if it would open up to lay completely flat giving even more room for needles. It just popped in my brain after seeing this! I may need to try that. If I do I will send a link to it. This is so cute! Love how you pinking sheered the edges of the pages and also all the colored pages! Adorable! Thanks for the great idea!!!
    Happy 4th of July and weekend to you and your family!
    Julie

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    Replies
    1. Anonymous8:40 AM

      If you open up the book and sew down the middle it will how the pages in place and open flat, I made a mushroom for my daughters sewing bag (Hello Kitty) just this summer for her her birthday. I put a cute button on the back with elastic to keep it closed. Same idea as this and you know I still have my needles in a denim one I made long ago with scotch tape to keep it from fraying...time to make me one of these ~.^

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  4. Anonymous9:51 AM

    absolutely adorable booklet!! what a great idea!
    Rebecca @ tr[i]b[e]cca

    ReplyDelete
  5. I love your colours of felt, mine are all fluorescent making quite hard to use for a lot of craft. Lovely tutorial!
    from Emily x

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  6. It´s really cute!

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  7. This is so (sew? LOL) cute!!! The whole pattern, from the pin and needle on the cover to the pinked rainbow pages, is absolutely charming! Definitely something I want to try in the near future :) Thanks so much for the great tutorial and your wonderful template!

    ReplyDelete

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