Beehive Needle Stitch Book

Long before we were all quarantined, the applique group I belong to decided to all make a stitch book to hold our hand sewing  needles. The book was curved at the top and had an inside page on each side and the front and back of the book.

Well you know me, I have to change things to suit myself and so I added more pages and made my book without the curved arch. I added a Kam snap to close the book (instead of a tie) and on the inside pages, I added labels (that I made myself) to designate the different kind of needles and where to place them. After all what good is a needle book if you have 10 kinds of needles all stuck into one piece of felt, which is how all my other needle books are.

I also added or changed the applique a bit and added beads, buttons and more. I used wool felt, wool and rayon blend felt that I hand dyed myself with Kool Aid, some acrylic felt too. I love how my needle book came out and I will be using it more than my other needle books because now I know what needle is what.

The beehive is some Kool Aid dyed wool blend felt I dyed years ago. The pink flowers are acrylic felt. The embroidery floss I used around the beehive ran when I misted it with water to remove the marking pen lines. So now my beehive has a halo of gold around it. It must be a heavenly beehive, lol!

Can you see the halo around the beehive where the embroidery floss color ran? I added a few tiny hot fix crystals above the hive for more bling.

This is the back outside of the book. 

First pages inside.

I used a purple heart Kam snap and a piece of measuring tape ribbon to snap the scissors in place. I don't like to use ribbon ties because they take longer to tie and the ties tend to look all ratty after awhile of being used. A cute sewing machine button anchors the ribbon at the other end. The purple thing you see is actually a knitting needle point protector that I like to use for small scissors to protect the scissors points too. 

I made labels for all my different needles. I typed the names into a columned document on the computer and printed them out and then used clear adhesive shelf liner and taped it down on the entire front and the back of the printed paper. I cut them apart using my ruler and rotary cutter and punched holes on each side. Then I just hand sewed them down with a button over each punched hole.

These pages show more needle types.

The beehive door is actually a pincushion. I am using the felt pieces like here under the beehive and on the first inside page to hold a few pins instead of holding the needles from the original pattern.

Not sure if you can see that the beehive door is stuffed to make it a pincushion. I kind of went overboard with the beads around the hive. I wasn't sure how it would look and the more I added the busier it looked to me, but I didn't want to take it all out, so I left it alone. 

This is the stitch book made by my friend, Bobbie, and it's her house we meet at for our applique group (that is before the quarantine started). This is how the Stitch Book is supposed to look (before I changed mine). The book has an arched top and binding all around. Bobbie does such beautiful work!

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