Ort Catcher Product Review

Lare last week I got this adorable Ort Catcher from It’s Charm School on Etsy. As you can see from the picture, it’s a small glazed ceramic pot with a felt lining. The type of pot is called a pinch pot because you make it by taking a bit of clay and pinching it to make the pot shape. In this case, the pot is glazed.

In addition to the felt lining, the pot has another feature that makes it great for stitchers — it’s magnetic! The pot has two small Rare Earth magnets on the back with matching magnets with small flowers on them. This means you can attach the Catcher to your project and use it for orts as you stitch. The small size, about 1.5″ makes it easy to fit in unstitched margins. It’s also easy to move around from place to place as long as you don’t get it too close to your magnetic needle minder. I did this & had to pry the small magnets off it.

You would think sticking a small pot on your project to hold orts would be a bad idea. As soon as you turned the work over to cut some threads, the orts would fall out. I was skeptical too. but this does not happen. The key is the felt lining. If you just had a glazed pot, the inside would be smooth and the thread ends would just fall out. Felt has enough sticking power that most threads will stay inside the bowl if you stick them in.

I really liked this tool, but I have some tips to make it work best:

• It does not hold much; expect to empty it if you are stitching for a while.
• Be sure to put thread ends firmly into the pot. If you don’t the threads will fall out.
• Empty by pulling the orts out of the bowl & throwing them out. The back magnets are small & can easily be lost this way.

I’ve been trying out lots of tools lately — this one is a real keeper!