Needle Park Avenue Product Review

The Needle Park Avenue is a clever gadget designed to hold threaded needles. Most often seen as a cross stitch supply, it has a bar magnet on the back so you can attach it to your canvas as you see in the picture above. It’s made by Designs from Marget Lee.

The NPA has a plastic strip with divisions on the front. Below it is a strip of the loopy side of velcro. It’s designed for you to put a threaded needle into each division. If you do this, use a Sharpie to write the color number on the plastic. Once complete you can wipe these off with an alcohol pad. While needlepointers can easily use it this way, this is great for cross stitchers because they change colors so often.

The needles can run through the velcro and are held securely in place. It’s really easy to get the needles out because they are nicely spaced.

I use mine differently. I lose needles often. My original solution to needles all over the floor was to pile them all into a small magnetic bowl. That was good for corralling them, but the needles were hard to grab and I often pulled out the wrong size or pulled out threaders, scissors, and tacks with the needle.

I decided to give this a try. I put the needles as I find them into the NPA. When I have time, I sort them by size, making it easy to find the right needle to pull out threads (large), or to stitch with finer threads (small). My needles stay neat and are always close at hand.

Right now I have been stitching small projects, so I keep my NPA in the magnetic bowl, but for larger projects, I’ll put it on the canvas. Another nice benefit is that I only put a single needle with every project, instead of three, because I know I have extras near by.

You’ll find the Needle Park Avenue at Amazon, in most cross stitch shops, and in some needlepoint shops.