Patterns

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Needle Minder

This is the needle minder project. My sample has beads the picots because the flowers were left over from wine charms I made for my sister to give her staff for Christmas. As you can see there's no worries about the needle falling off and the safety pin doesn't show.



Supplies

2- 6 ring flowers with 3-6 inches of thread left (see previous post if you don't have a pattern)
2- 6mm magnetic hematite beads (find these at a bead shop, the dollar store or a craft store) These beads do come in color but I am convinced that the magnet isn't as strong
1 safety pin (in green if you can find them)
1 yard green thread
crochet hook
Step 1 Add magnetic bead to flower by pulling excess thread through bead and joining to base of ring 4. Hide end but make sure to keep the bead hole open. Make 2 0r 3.






Step 2 Wrap/encapsulate the non open end of the safety pin. Jon at http://tatsaway.blogspot.com/ has both needle tatting and shuttle tatting tutorials on how to cover a cabone ring. Its the same idea on the safety pin.
Using the green thread make 4 double stitches.




Step 3 Add 1st flower onto the green thread. Sorry, this means that shuttle tatters will have to unwind their thread. Snug up the flower then make 2 more ds. Add 2nd flower the same way.











Step 4 Finish by adding ds until the closed side of the pin is covered. I also went about the coil with the green but you don't need to. If your safety pin is longer then add another flower, if its shorter then only add one flower. Likewise you can vary the ds to fit. Hide the thread.
Here's a picture of the finished project and pictures of me wearing the needle minder. The magnetic beads work really well and the needle stays on even when I clean.

4 comments:

  1. What a cool idea! Lately I've been working with finer threads and the only way I can unpick a mistake is to use a sharp needle. Recently I had to retro-tat a couple of rings and chains...twice. Not the same ones but on the same piece, so I ended up poking the needle through my shirt or holding it in my teeth. (BAD) I love this idea! Now I just need some magnetic beads!

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  2. That is such a clever idea! As often as I unpick (retro-tat) having one of these to keep my needle handy will make life a lot simpler. :-)

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  3. Ha! Got beads tonight! But I'm working on something else so it will wait.

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