I’ve found a good way to store and transport needles is in a needle book! I love making these because they require very little fabric so are great projects for those pretty scraps you have sitting around.
Materials:
- A. 5 1⁄4” x 3 1⁄2” of cover fabric
- B. 5 1⁄4” x 3 1⁄2” of inside fabric
- C. 5 1⁄4” x 4 1⁄2” of inside fabric for pocket
- D. 1 1⁄2” x 20″ of bias tape fabric
- E. 4 3⁄4” x 2 3⁄4” of felt for needle pages
- F. 2 1⁄2” x 3 1⁄2” of peltex, cut 2 (can be found in the interfacing section of JoAnns)
- G. 2 1⁄2” piece of elastic
- button (not pictured)
To start, fold the pocket piece (C) in half and iron flat.
Place the cover fabric (A) face down.
Lay the inside fabric (B) on top.
Lay the pocket piece (C) on top. Line up all the bottom edges and pin the pieces together.
Lay the felt piece (E) on top, centering it and pin in place.
Now you need to mark the 2 stitching lines that will make up the spine of the book. From one edge of the book, measure 2 1⁄2” and draw a line.
Do the same from the other edge of the book.
Stitch along the 2 lines. Remember that the bobbin thread will show on the cover of your needle book so you might want to pick a color that matches.
If you have pinking shears or scalloped scissors, you can trim the edges of the felt pages with a decorative edging. If you don’t (or have no idea what pinking shears are), no worries, you can just ignore this step!
Now take one of the Peltex pieces (F) and slide it in between the cover (A) and inner fabric (B).
Pin the Peltex in place.
Repeat with the other piece of Peltex on the other side of the thread book.
Baste around the outside of book with as small of a seam allowance as possible.
Make a loop with the elastic (G) and sew it on to the back of the book. (I forgot to take a photo of this step when I was making the first needle book, so I took a photo on the second needle book, which is why the fabrics are different here.)
I didn’t think any of the standard bias tape sizes you can purchase worked for the needle book so I opted to make my own. You don’t need a lot of bias tape so it goes very quickly!
Take your bias tape fabric (D) and fold it in half lengthwise and iron.
Open up the fabric and then fold each side in to the center fold and iron.
Fold the bias tape fabric back up, iron it one more time, and you’ve created bias tape!
Take your bias tape and bind the edges of the book. I’m not going into the details of how to apply bias tape here as there are a lot of tutorials online on how to do it.
Random tip: if you have some stitch witchery handy, use that to hold your bias tape in place until you sew it all down. I find that helps me keep the bias binding on my craft projects very neat.
Another thing that I found helpful is pinning the needle book pages together and out of the way so they don’t get caught as you are stitching down the bias tape.
After you’re done binding the edges, sew a button onto the front. You can use a regular button or a decorative button. In one of the samples at the top of this post, I used a decorative cat button which I thought was appropriate for this blog!
And you’re done!
