Why would anyone want a hand-made needle? Surely, a hand-made needle must be some roughly hewn large thing unbefitting to fine embroidery work!! Well, you might think that, but the fact is, whether you pursue Japense embroidery or not, having a few hand-made needles among your embroidery tools is a good idea!

Although I have several books on Japanese embroidery, I have never formally studied the techniques, so my hand-made needles aren't actually used in Japanese embroidery. These unique needles come in handy for working with real metal threads, with any smaller cord-like threads, and even just with your regular embroidery floss.

The advantage of hand-made needles is all in the eye. Because they are hand bored and not punched out by a machine, there is no "crimp" or ridge on the inside of the needle. The holes are nice and smooth.

This smooth round hole helps reduce the wear and tear on threads from the eyes of regular needles. With goldwork, this is important. You see, if you use a regular needle in goldwork (especially with gold-wrapped threads that you are planning to pass through the ground fabric), the ridge inside the edge of a regular needle can cut through the outside wrapping of gold on the core thread. When you pull the needle through the ground fabric, if your gold has split from the core, you risk the gold bunching up as you pull the thread through. Hand bored needles help you avoid this dilemma.

As for hand made needles being bulky or large, it depends on the size. The tiny #3 hand-made Japanese needle is so small that you can't stitch one strand of DMC with it. If you split your strand of DMC in half (single strands of DMC are made up of a two-ply twisted thread), you can manage one ply (half the strand) in the eye, if you can see it to thread it! In other words, the #3 is a pretty small needle. So the hand made needles can be very tiny, but they can also be pretty large - able to accommodate gold passing thread easily.



Here, you can see the sizes of the hand-made needles I own. They are laid out on 8-square-per-inch graph paper. The #13 is large and has a bulky look to it. (It's the one on the far right, with the number cut off.) The #3 on the left is pretty darned tiny!



This is the #7 needle, threaded with Gilt Sylke Twist. A #5 is too small for this thread, and I don't have a #6 to try. I haven't tried the thread yet with this needle, so I can't say exactly how well it works! Once I get caught up with my regular work, I'm going to be testing different techniques with the GST. I figure the #7 needle will work fine for it. The #10 seems too big - as if there would be too large a whole left in the fabric after the needle and thread passed through. We shall see!!



Good things come in small packages! This is the dark green GST here - the "dusty" look on it is actually the sparke from the gold. Very nice color! And amazingly fine stuff!

You can find hand-made Japanese needles through the Japanese Embroidery Center in Atlanta. They are a valuable and reliable resource, and, if you do order from them, I think you'll be pleased both with the products and the service.

I'm looking forward to playing with these needles and thread soon and posting the results for you! If you have any questions or any suggestions about any testing you'd like to see with the GST ("What kind of embroidery can you do with this thread?") just let me know! I'll be happy to see if I can accommodate any specific requests for trials.

Labels: needles, needlework tools, pictures

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Once you have an embroidery project set up and ready to go - fabric selected, design transferred, threads lined up - perhaps the most important thing to consider is what embroidery needle to use. There are all kinds of different types of embroidery needles - which one to use depends on your fabric and thread. The thing is, within the "types" of needles, you also have the consideration of quality. Here, I'm looking at embroidery needles from a company called Pony.

Normally, I use "fine English needles" for my embroidery projects. Richard Hemming, John James, Mary Arden, and S. Thomas & Sons are pretty much the brands I've stuck with over the years. They're reliable and fairly easy to come by. You sometimes can find them in hobby and craft stores (in a very limited range), but you will find a better range at your local needlework shop. You can also find them online through almost any needlework or fabric shop, or through one of my favorite needle sources, Colonial Needle. I also have a marvelous selection of very fine needles from Wendy Schoen Designs, but I don't use them as often because they're wrapped up and my supply is limited. (But I do love those needles!) So that's my plug for the needles I typically use.

Recently, though, Michael Cook of Wormspit.com e-mailed me about some needles that he had come upon and finally tracked down. The manufacturer is Pony, from India, and the needles are used by the Chinese in their fine and detailed hand embroidery. After some contact with the company, he received a shipment of the needles to try. He kindly sent me a selection of #10, #11, and #12 - three each with gold eyes, plus one fully gilded needle in each size.

It was a while before I could work with the needles, but finally, yesterday I took out a small project and used the needles on it. It's a thread painting project, worked in one strand of DMC in a high count cotton muslin.

I generally use a #10 needle on these projects, but mostly because I'm too lazy to go through my supplies and get other needles out. I always have #10 on hand!

Instead, I decided to try the #11 Pony, and they were perfect. They made those meticulously placed little stitches easy, and they are slightly finer than #10, which seemed to make a difference on the split stitching in the long and short stitch in tiny, detailed areas. In short, I liked the #11! I had all four threaded and working on the project at once. There is a slightly different feel to the fully guilded needle, but I can't really place or describe what's different about it. It passes through the threads and the fabric easily, but it "feels" as if there's a coating on it, because there is. It's not a bad feeling, and in fact, I like working with the needle. But there is a slightly different "something" about it.



Here are the needles, two of each, one of which is the gilded one. I've laid them on 8-square-per-inch graph paper so you can get an idea of the size.



Here they are again, with a #10 Richard Hemming needle (left). The #10 Pony and the #10 Richard Hemming are the same length, as far as I can tell, even though the Pony looks longer (it's the placement on the paper).

I threaded both #10s (R.H. and Pony) with one strand of DCM and stitched with them, one needle right after the other, to see if I could tell a difference in size or feel. The Pony needle feels slightly finer than the Richard Hemming, which is what Michael found as well.



One strand of DMC also fits well in the #12 Pony - BUT... it doesn't work well on tightly woven or high count fabric, as it takes a pit of a tug to get it through. It works fine on something a little looser, though.

Michael has some photos of the Pony needles really close up, so you can get a good look at the eyes.

The long and short of it:

I like the Pony needles. I'm going to keep using them on my present project to see how they stand up. They bend slightly - I don't know how they will wear over a little more use - but I don't mind a needle that bends. In fact, I like it! It gets "comfortable."

The #10 Pony seems slightly finer than the #10 Richard Hemming.

The #11 Pony works well with 1 strand of DMC on a high count quality muslin.

Most people will probably need a needle threader for the #12 with a strand of DMC.

To find Pony needles, contact Hedgehog Handworks. Michael spoke to Joady about carrying them, and they will be apparently getting in the gold-eye variety.

One Final Note: On Threading Needles!!

Don't lick your thread or wet your needle eye to thread your needles! Ok, if you have an endless supply of needles and you don't mind switching out, fine - lick away. I've heard lots of reasons why "you shouldn't lick your embroidery thread" - the ones are important and cause for concern are:

1. The Main Reason: Wet thread through the eye of a needle can cause the needle to "rust" (in a very tiny way) right inside the eye of the needle, which can cause little burrs that are hard on your threads, cause waste of thread, and can even cause damage to your project without your really realizing what is happening.

2. The habit of wetting thread can work against you the one time you're playing with a thread that has been unfortunate enough not to hold on to its dye. In these days of hand over-dyed thread, risking a mark on clean fabric is not really worth it.

3. If you work with silk embroidery threads, I'm pretty sure that licking silk is something akin to sacreligious. Silk also weakens when it's wet.

Tomorrow, I'll show you some photos of hand-made Japanese needles. And to top off the whole needle discussion, I'd love to hear how all you non-lickers out there thread your needles! I'll cover how I do it, too.

Labels: needles, needlework tools, pictures

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