7 essential steps to sew together a needle roll

Yesterday on QUILTsocial we made the large pocket sections to hold all the packages of hand embroidery needles in our embroidered needle roll. Today I’ll use my Brother NQ900 to secure these pockets to the interfaced layer we made on Tuesday , and tomorrow we can finish and start filling up our needle roll.

The Brother NQ900

STEP 1

Lay the wider pocket on top of the interfaced fabric layer and align it so its folded top edge is 1¼” from the top of the interfaced layer. Use UNIQUE quilting Clever Clips to hold it in place on each end of the interfacing layer.

Align pocket 1¼” from the top of the interfaced layer.

STEP 2

Measure 4½” from the top of the interfaced layer and mark a sewing line all the way along the pocket. This will make the pockets 3″ deep (the same as the smaller pocket).

Mark a sewing line along the pocket.

STEP 3

I’ll use my Brother NQ900 to sew along this marked line from one end of the pocket to the other.

Sew along the drawn line.

STEP 4

Next, I’ll use a wide zigzag stitch on the NQ900 to secure the bottom raw edge of the pocket. I’m doing this so the needle packages in the bottom level of pockets don’t get caught on this raw edge. It doesn’t matter what color thread you use because it will be totally hidden by the bottom pocket fabric.

Zigzag along the raw edge of the top pocket.

STEP 5

Use the UNIQUE quilting Clever Clips to secure the narrow pocket to the interfaced fabric layer. The raw edge of this pocket will be aligned with bottom raw edge of the interfaced fabric layer and it will overlap the bottom of the top pocket so it hides all the stitching done in the previous two steps.

Clip bottom pocket section to interfaced fabric.

STEP 6

With everything clipped together, we can use the walking foot on the Brother NQ900 to sew along the marked lines on the interfaced fabric and pocket sections. This will divide each of the top and bottom pocket sections into four. Sew down the center of each of these to create a total of 8 small pockets in each row. You can mark these sewing lines, or just do like I did and eyeball it. You’ll see that sewing down the middle of each of the sections also divides the wool rectangles in half.

Sew down the marked lines and halfway between them to create the small pockets.

STEP 7

The last step for today is to create the ties you’ll use to secure the needle roll when it is tied up.

First, cut a piece of the UNIQUE Medium Hot Pink Rick Rack about 30″ long. Since this product is 100% polyester, you can melt the ends with a candle to prevent them from unravelling. I find that passing the end of the ribbon or rick rack just through the bottom of the flame works best. If you pass it through at the tip of the flame it may leave the rick-rack black and sooty.

Melt the ends of the rick rack with a candle.

Fold the rick rack in half and pin it to the center of the embroidered panel at the end that says Needles. Make sure the ends of the rick rack are laying along the panel and not the other direction.

Pin folded rick rack to front of needle roll

We’re almost there! Tomorrow the needle roll will be finished!

My Brother NQ900 has been such a help sewing these pockets for the needle roll and it had no problem whatsoever sewing through all the layers, especially since the UNIQUE Clever Clips held the bulky layers of fabrics secure. See you tomorrow for the finishing touches to our needle roll.

This is part 4 of 5 in this series

Go back to part 3: 5 simple steps to make pockets for a needle roll

Go to part 5: Select the perfect decorative stitch for machine sewn binding

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