Know your Needles

Choosing the right sewing
C needle and size
As a guide always remember the general rule of the
 bigger the number the finer the sewing needle. 

See How Needles are Made 

Sharps




These needles are the most popular needle 
for general sewing.

Size 2, 3 and 4                 medium to heavy fabrics
Size 5, 6, 7, 8, 9,10          light to medium fabrics
Size 11 and 12                 fine fabrics or creating small
                                        delicate stitches



These needles have long eyes, and are used for mending
 and darning using cotton or yarn.



In addition to being a darning needle these needles are 
useful to use during basting and layering fabrics together.

These are long needles with long eyes making them
 ideal for spanning large holes during mending, 
using cotton or yarn. Size 14/18 are useful needles
 to use when sewing pieces of knitting or crochet
 together.
Curved needles are great for those difficult tasks:
 sewing fabric boxes together or repairing lampshades.

 
These needles are available for hand stitching and 
machine stitching and are ideal when working with
 leather, suede and other tough materials.

Traditional Craft
Depending on the type of craft or project you are 
working on will determine the type of needle you
 will require. Sometimes you may need to use the 
same needle type across a variety of sizes to
 complete your project or indeed you may require 
an array of different types of needle.



These needles have a large eye and a blunt round 
point designed for the use in needlepoint, petit
 point, countered cross stitch and plastic canvas work.

Size 13, 14                        Suitable for children to use 
                                         when stitching on Binca or
                                         6hpi Aida fabric.
Size 16, 18, and 20           Suitable for tapestry
Size 22, 24, 26 and 28      Commonly used in cross stitch
                                          and petit point.


Embroidery needles have a long eye which makes 
threading the needle so much easier when using
 multiple strands of thread.  The most popular sizes
 used to embroider are size 7 and 9.
Because of their large eye these needles are suitable
 for general sewing. They are ideal for people
who have difficulty seeing the eye of a needle. 

These needles have a large eye and a sharp point 
and are used in the art of crewel embroidery and
ribbon embroidery. Sizes range from 13 to 26;
the most popular sizes are 16 to 26. Size 13 and 14 
are commonly used for heavy and coarse fabrics.

These needles are very short and fine with a 
round eye.  The shorter length allows the
quilter to create quick and even stitching. 
Sizes range from 5 to 12, we recommend 
a beginner to use a size7 or a size 8. 
Big Eye Quilting needles are designed
with a big eye for the ease of threading. 
These needles are available in size 10.

Standard Beading needles are very fine and long, 
with long eyes and are available in sizes 10 to 15.
These needles are suitable to use with beads, pearls
 and sequins and they are particularly useful in
the art of threading and stringing pearls. 
Short Beading needles are ideal when attaching beads 
to fabric featuring additional embroidery.

These needles are long with round eyes and are 
traditionally used in the art of hat making.  They are
also used for pleating and creating fancy stitching 
commonly known as smocking.
Machine needle sizes are always quoted in imperial 
and metric.  Regular point machine needles are
designed for domestic regular sewing machines 
and are used for basic stitching.
Size 9/70          light fabrics, silk and taffeta
Size 11/80        medium fabrics, cotton, linen and satin
Size 14/90       medium to heavy fabrics, this is an
                        ideal in between needle
Size 16/100      heavy fabrics, denim, tweeds, curtain
                        fabrics and soft furnishings
These machine needles are ideal to use on jersey, 
stretch and synthetic fabrics
These needles create trouble free seaming and 
are the perfect complement to jersey and 
synthetic fabrics.
These needles are designed for heavy duty stitching 
and are suitable for denim fabrics.
This needle forms parallel stitches. 
Size 11 x 2mm              fine to medium fabrics.
Size 14 x 4mm              medium to heavy fabrics.
Use the standard needle threader for threading cotton/thread
and the chunky threader when using chunky yarn.

Bodkins and Weaving needles are great for threading
 tapes and elastics.

No comments:

Post a Comment