You know I love needleminders. One f my favorite places to find fronts for needleminders I make myself is to buy enamel pins. These are very popular and come in an enormous range f designs. The picture above shows one of my recent conversions.
You can’t just go straight from pin to needleminder, you’ll need to do some work to convert them. You’ll need
- pin
- needle nose pliers
- safety glasses
- strong glue for jewelry
- 1/8″ thick ceramic magnets
The pins, when you buy them have backs that look like this, above. When ordering, if you are given choices about closings pick butterfly or rubber ones. You’ll be throwing these out, so go for cheap.
once you remove the closure, you’ll have pins that stick up. These need to be removed. To do this, put on the safety glasses and grip the pin in the needlenose pliers, rock the pin back and forth until it weakens and breaks off. in theory you should be able to pull off the entire assembly but this happens only about 5% of the time, so don’t expect it.
You’ll be left with a little stub of the posts and its base, This is less than 1/16′ high, but that’s enough for it to get caught in your canvas if your magnet is too thin.
That’s why I recommend 1/8″ thick ceramic magnets. These blackish magnets are not as strong as rare earth magnets but they are thick enough to keep the stub of the pin from getting into a canvas hole. Rare earth magnets this thick would be just too strong for our purposes.
If you rarely move your magnets, this may not be a problem for you, but I move my magnets all the time. For ones with stubs, before I learned this trick, I had to remove the bottom magnet, push up the erring stub, move the pin, and reassemble. That’s just too much work for something that should be simple.
You can follow these steps to make needleminders from pierced earrings as well (look for these at thrift shops to save money.
About Janet M Perry
Janet Perry is the Internet's leading authority on needlepoint. She designs, teaches and writes, getting raves from her fans for her innovative techniques, extensive knowledge and generous teaching style. A leading writer of stitch guides, she blogs here and lives on an island in the northeast corner of the SF Bay with her family
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