Organize | Perpetual Tea Party

Needlebook

07 April 2011 Written by Kyoko 0 Comments

I’ve seen beautifully tattered antique needlebooks (made from leather and muslin and such) and was inspired to make my version one cloudy Sunday in which we decided to stay home and do nothing much (which is something we almost never do!). It’s basically a needle organizer which I’ve been needing since I have been, increasingly lately, working with variety of fabric/thread that requires appropriate needles.

The cover is wool felt onto which I have needle-felted more colorful wool onto, embroidered, and sewn the little vintage key.

I made assorted pages with fabrics that are appropriate for needles they are holding. This one is regular quilting cotton and holds my quilting needle (on top left) and general purpose sewing needle (bottom left).

This is the page for embroidery needles.

And I’m feeling totally smug about this page which holds ballpoint needle for sewing knit fabric made from jersey knit fabric (organized on this page, now I can easily tell them apart from other needles even though they don’t look much different).

These are my assorted crappy quality needles for craft purpose (like if there’s nothing else appropriate, or sewing paper or something).

And this is the page for my *extreme* needles.

I punched 3 holes and added eyelets to each page and then bound it with lacey seam binding. This is what all the pages look like from the side.

There are more pages, but you get the idea.

March Is…

30 March 2011 Written by Kyoko 0 Comments

March is National Craft Month, apparently (who makes these things official?) which is serendipitous since it’s always been MY craft month being my birthday month. It’s not that my birthday is special at this point in my life, but hey, what good is a birthday if it’s not a good excuse to do something nice for myself so… I got for myself this box to organize my embroidery floss in!! It’s actually a vintage slide organizer, but it’s completely perfect for my purpose and I’m so very happy with it!!!

My mom sent me a package a short while ago and in it was this cutest little box of chocolates. I’ve seen many beautiful chocolates, but I totally adore these! Japan isn’t known for chocolates specifically, but like every thing else from there, it’s very yummy. I’ve been missing Japan lately.

Also in the package were some Japanese craft books (quilting, jewelry making, sewing by hand…) and I read quite carefully on bits about hand quilting technique. As it turns out, technique is important because my quilting stitches are getting better already (though much improvement is still desired) and I can do them a lot more comfortably and faster too. Who knew that thimbles are actually useful!

Really big pale pink stitches are basting threads (it’s temporarily keeping together top fabric, batting and bottom fabric) which will be taken out at the end. My mom also sent me these from Japan. There isn’t such a thing as “basting thread” in US apparently, even though it’s such a necessary item in sewing! Basically it’s a cotton thread that rips out really easily. I think that it’s far easier to handle then having million pins in my WIPs.