Needle Cases

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The other day my daughter was sick with a migraine and just wanted to sleep on the couch. My husband was out getting new tires put on our truck and the house was quiet. I decided to go through my small patterns that I had collected to make during my “year of smalls” and kitted up a bunch of them. Now whenever I need a project I can just grab one out of a basket. This will work well for when I will find myself waiting somewhere… in the car for a child to get out of school, in the doctor’s waiting room, etc. Each pattern is either a freebie found online from a designer’s Facebook page or something that was featured in one of the British magazines that I subscribe to via Zinio. The patterns are printed out and cut down to a small manageable size and put into a ziplock bag with a hoop, the needed threads, a pair of scissors, and needles.

I had already come up with the idea for needle cases out of old wax containers years ago, but while making up these kits I decided to make a lot more of them. Luckily, I had saved most of the containers that my son and I had received from the orthodontist during our years of treatment, and all I needed to do was cut magnet strips the correct size, stick them down into the cleaned out containers, and add needles. The magnet strip was found rather inexpensively at Walmart and comes in a roll, with adhesive on one side. If you have a child with braces, be sure to keep the wax containers! They are the perfect size for storing needles and can be thrown into the kits you make up. Two strips of the magnet positioned next to each other fills the container with a magnetic surface very nicely.

Since I did not have enough scissors to make up a lot of cross stitch kits, I went to Amazon and looked around. I found a great deal on these scissors which were marketed as nose hair trimmers! For only $8.99 for 5 pair, it seemed like a good bargain. When they came in the mail I was amazed at how sharp they were, and they are the perfect small size to add to my project bags. They are also inexpensive enough that if they get lost or broken it is no big deal.

You can purchase the scissors here. Sorry, the needle cases are not for sale!

XXX
Carrie


Something a little different

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It seems like my stitching time has been nonexistent lately. But today my daughter wanted to do some beading (basically, stringing beads onto cord to make necklaces) and I figured that would be a great time to do some beadwork of my own. I had picked out some beautiful glass beads months ago in the hopes of making a scissors fob but never actually got around to constructing it.

fob1

It only took a few minutes and voila! I think this turned out pretty well. It helped that I have done quite a bit of jewelry making and had the necessary equipment, like pliers and crimp beads. The lobster claw clasps that I had were not quite big enough to fit my usual pair of scissors, so I had to attach this to my pair of Hardanger “Lil Snips”. But that worked out pretty well because these scissors are so small, they are easy to lose. The beads are glass, so hopefully they won’t get chipped. I would like to get some bigger clasps (or even pretty ribbons) and make more fobs for my other scissors. The hardest part is deciding what beads to use and what order to arrange them in!

fob2

XXX
Carrie


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dritzI am about 25% of the way done with the second side of the biscornu chart, and when I am done I will start on the over-one scissors fob. It dawned on me that I don’t have a nice pair of scissors to attach the fob to. The ones I use most often are a cheap plastic pair with blue handles that fold up. I believe they are by Dritz, because they look just like this photo. I think it will be time, once I get the fob stitched and made up, to treat myself to a nice pair of scissors. Maybe that can be my goal, something to look forward to in order to get through stitching a decent sized chart over one on 28 count!

XXX
Carrie