Thread Tidies First Look

When I’m home or on the road and stitching I try to keep my needlepoint neat. I hate having threads hanging around. It makes me nuts!

So much so that one year at the ANG Seminar I spent every evening and my entire day off finishing up all the little squares on our project we had started in class. I just could not concentrate on the next area with those thread ends.

But there are times when having threads on top of your canvas can’t be avoided. A really great example is stitching Bargello. You don’t want to start a new thread for every line, at least in most cases. At the same time leaving the threads hanging is irritating and can interfere with your new stitching.

I’m working on the stitch sampler for 25 Bargello Patterns and I feel as if I have threads everywhere! Tuesday night they even got caught up in other stitching.

In yesterday’s mail my set of Thread Tidies from Floss Candy, above, arrived. Not only are they cute, they look extremely practical. The scoops, or other decorations, are glued onto a hair clip that’s less than 2″ long. The clip has serrated edges to grip the thread securely.

That might work fine by itself if you work in hand. It will not work if you use a frame unless the threads are near an edge. If you use a hoop, they will not work at all because the clips won’t open far enough.

Here’s where the genius comes in. Included with the three clips are three sets of Rare Earth magnets. Because the clips are metal, you can put one under the clip on top of your work. The second clip goes under the work to hold the clip in place. It’s such a clever solution to what could be an awful problem.

Since the Bargello is at the top of the To Do pile, I’ll let you know how they worked.