On 7/21/13 1:48 PM, Sue wrote:
. . . they look rusty at the point where they stick through the cloth so not something I would use to sew with, particularly not lace.
I used to have some "steel fur" -- a very fine steel wool used for smoothing between coats of varnish on fine fishing rods. This did a good job of cleaning needles: just pinch a bit of it and push the needle back and forth through it. (It was inadvertently thrown out during a move.)
. . . . But of course I want to keep them in good condition so I can use them when I want to and wonder how best to do that. Any advice would be welcome.
My mother was sewing in the kitchen one day and stuck a needle into a linen curtain. When she remembered it, it had rusted so badly that she couldn't get it out of the curtain. The needles in my grandmother's housewife http://roughsewing.home.comcast.net/~roughsewing/HOUSEWF.HTM are also so rusty that I've never made any attempt to remove them, but those may have had a century to rust in place. Cotton and linen are very good at pulling moisture out of the air. This makes them cool to wear in the summer, but an absolute menace to needles. Linen is particularly good/bad. Back when craft felt was made of real wool, I made a needlebook in the shape of a book, which I thought frightfully clever. The largest needles are slipped under rows of mending-wool embroidery arranged to look like writing. Some needles have been stuck in the book ever since; the book didn't turn out to be as useful as I thought it would be, and whenever I want a needle I go to the curtain in the sewing room. No needle has rusted in the all-wool book. I made my pincushion of wool stuffed with my own hair, and make it a habit, when I want to store a single needle, to stick it into a snippet of red wool flannel. (Red so I can find it -- and because that's what I've got otherwise- useless snippets of.) I've also stuck needles in snippets of silk, and haven't yet gotten into trouble that way, but have less experience to go on. I wanted to keep a large needle with a spool of coarse thread, and stuffed a scrap of wool flannel into the hole, somehow creating a neat little dome to stick the needle into. For an emergency kit, a tiny glass test-tube with an air-tight cork might be a good idea if you can find one. -- Joy Beeson http://www.debeeson.net/joy http://www.debeeson.net/LakeCam/LakeCam.html west of Fort Wayne, Indiana, U.S.A. To unsubscribe send email to majord...@arachne.com containing the line: unsubscribe lace-chat y...@address.here. For help, write to arachne.modera...@gmail.com. Photo site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lacemaker/sets/
