What needle goes with this fabric?
Knowing what type of needle to use for your hand stitching project can sometimes be confusing.
There are so many different kinds of embroidery needles but here’s a general guide if you’re not sure what kind to use.
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Transcript
The main thing you want to look at is the tip. Some needles have a sharp tip and some needles have a dull tip and both are used for different types of embroidery.
The type of needle to use will depend on the kind of fabric you have.
The general guide is that the looser the weave and the more you can see holes in the fabric, the more dull needle you’ll want to use.
For example if you have canvas or ada cloth or something in which you can clearly see the holes in then you want to use a needle with a dull tip because you want to be putting the needle through the holes of the fabric instead of piercing the fabric.
With linen you can see that it is a tighter weave than canvas but you can still see some of the holes. In a coarse linen you would see the holes more and in a really fine linen you would see them less.
In this situation you probably could use a needle with a dull tip but you’re moving towards using something with a sharper tip so you could try both and see which one is easier to stitch with.
When you start stitching on home dec projects like a tea towel, then you’ll probably want to move more towards a sharper needle and if you’re stitching on cotton fabric then for sure you’re going to want a sharp needle because it’s going to be really difficult to get a dull needle through the fabric.
The one exception to this is if you’re stitching on felt. So clearly felt is not a woven fabric so there are no holes in it for you to stitch through, but because of the structure of felt then you can still easily get a needle with a dull tip through. So in that situation you can probably use whichever needle you have on hand or whichever one you’re more comfortable with
So there’s a quick and easy way to help you figure out what needle you should use for your hand embroidery project.
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