This very little mini came about for a very practical reason- I wanted a place to put machine needles when I needed a different style of needle, but wasn’t ready to dispose of the one I had been using. Wool is ideal to store needles in since it doesn’t dull them, so I thought this would be a fun place to experiment using this fiber.
A friend has a needle felting machine, so I brought some neutral colored wool roving with me to create the fabric for the off white stripe on this mini. It was so much fun to see a bunch of loose fibers transform before my eyes into 100% wool felt! The coral colored wool was a piece of fabric my mom donated from her stash, and I used decorative machine stitching to appliqué the needle felted wool in place.
The stitching was done entirely with my mechanical machine, so it is all carefully placed straight stitches to create the boxes and lettering. My most used machine needle sizes are 10, 12, and 14. The specialty needles I tend to use are ball point needles for knits (K) and a Microtex needles (M). A couple rows of decorative stitching and a dense zig zag around the edges finish the mini.
Title: Needle minding mini
Techniques: Machine needle felting
Quilting: Machine quilted using straight and decorative stitches
Fabric: Felted wool and repurposed wool scraps
Batting: Warm and White
Thread: Mettler
Binding: Dense machine zig zag stitching
1 Comment
Luke Smith
January 11, 2017 at 6:03 pmI love this pink and white needle minding mini you made for yourself! Using a needle felting machine to make it sounds like a good idea, but nothing I would have thought of. It would be pretty neat to make my own felt for a project like this, so maybe I will look into buying a machine like that of my own! Thanks for the post!