Amelia’s Needle Keep
Sewing a needle keep for my Aunt Amelia in Akumal, Mexico
Need a totally portable project to escape reality? Meet your new friend needle keep - completely sewn and embroidered by hand!
Of course I had to bring this project with me to Mexico. I mean what else are you going to do en su casa in between swimming, eating, and drinking margaritas for breakfast?
A needle keep is essentially a cloth book to hold needles and pins and if you include a pocket, a pair of scissors, thread, etc. there are hundreds of versions on Pinterest. I would say its a more compact version of a hussif (housewife) used by sailors and soldiers when the women weren’t around to mend. The history is actually fascinating, so don’t despair when someone calls you a hussy!
This is also a great project to use leftover fabric scraps since the piece is very small. I used wool felt and some cotton scraps my mom gave me from her quilt stash.
The images below are from Pinterest, I used these as inspiration for the embroidered edges of the wool felt pages, aren’t these cool? The size of each page is different too, maybe for different sized needles? Obviously someone really loved and used these!
I always start by making a pattern in paper before I begin so I know I like the size and then I use it to cut the fabric.
It was fun to satin stitch the edges of the pages with different colors of floss, it feels good to use orts and leftover thread from other projects. I also used the same style satin stitch to attach the nantucket red wool felt to the cotton lining.
For the “cover” I embroidered Amelia’s initial “A” on a separate piece of felt “Sajou style”, then appliqued it to the main fabric and before finishing lightly stuffed it with cotton fill to make a sort of raised pincushion. The frame around the applique is palestrina stitch over a simple satin stitch (which hides imperfect stitches!) The photo of the EG monogram is so perfect. I really wanted to copy that puffy appllique.
And for the interior pages I simply made signatures out of rectangular pieces of felt and stitched them together through the cover. Then to finish the book I hid those stitches on the outside binding with silk ribbon, and used more ribbon as a tie to close the book shut.
Binding stitches in the gutter of the book holding everything together
I like making handmade things that are useful. I actually made this before I taught myself how to machine sew on my Singer Heavy Duty 4452 I bought during the Covid lockdown - so I hand stitched this one out of necessity.
Since then, I’ve made other needle keeps for my mom, my sister, my niece and for myself on the machine, but I really like hand stitching because it is so portable and therapeutic - I mean sometimes I wonder if anyone really likes to receive this homemade stuff but it keeps me from going insane, no kidding!
