Miscellaneous Definitions — accessories, trims, tools and general fashion terms from Apparel Search
A needle is a long, slender object with a pointed tip, usually made of metal. The first needles were used in sewing, and were often made of bone or wood. A needle for hand sewing carries, at the end opposite the point, the small hole called the eye, through which the thread passes — a combination of point, shaft and eye so ancient and so complete that it remains the basic shape of the sewing tool today.
You may want to also learn a little bit about "pins". The development of the pin closely paralleled that of its perforated counterpart, the needle. Archaeological evidence suggests that curved sewing pins have been used for over four thousand years. Originally, these were fashioned out of iron and bone by the Sumerians and were used to hold clothes together. Later, pins were also used to hold pages of books together by threading the needle through their top corner. Walter Hunt invented the safety pin by forming an eight-inch brass pin into a bent pin with a spring and guard.
| The above article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/needle). 11/10/04 |
The sewing needle is among humanity's oldest tools, and among its least changed. Eyed needles of bone are tens of thousands of years old: someone ground a sliver of bone to a point, drilled a hole at the blunt end, and created the complete logic of stitching — pierce the material, carry a thread through the hole the point has made, pull the thread home, repeat. Wood served where bone was scarce; bronze, iron and finally steel refined the same outline. Modern steel needles are drawn, hardened, polished and plated so they slide through cloth with minimal drag and resist the corrosion of handling, but their anatomy would be instantly legible to the person who made the bone counterpart: a pointed tip, a slender shaft sized to the work, and an eye for the thread.
Hand sewing needles divide by that anatomy into families. Sharps are the general-purpose needle of medium length with a round eye. Betweens, or quilting needles, are shorter and finer for fast, even stitching through layers. Milliners' needles are long, suiting basting and hat work. Embroidery or crewel needles have long eyes that take stranded threads and yarns without crushing them; tapestry needles blunt the point and enlarge the eye for counted work on canvas, where the needle must pass through existing holes rather than pierce cloth; leather needles sharpen the point into cutting edges that slice rather than push through hide. Needle sizes run counter-intuitively in the hand-sewing system: the higher the number, the finer and shorter the needle — a survival of wire-drawing gauges that every sewer learns once and uses forever.
Sewing machine needles share the name and the stitch-forming idea but are engineered as replaceable machine components. The eye sits near the point rather than at the far end, because the machine forms its stitch by passing the needle down through the cloth and catching the thread loop from below; a groove runs down the blade to shelter the thread during penetration, and the shank is shaped and sized to a machine system so the needle clamps at exactly the designed height. Points multiply for materials: universal and sharp points for wovens, ballpoints that slip between the loops of knits instead of cutting them, wedge points for leather, and heavy-duty forms for denim. A dull or bent machine needle is the first suspect in skipped stitches and damaged fabric, which is why machine needles are treated as consumables and changed by the project, not by the year.
Beyond sewing, the word needle serves the whole textile field — knitting needles, felting needles barbed to entangle fibers, tufting and weaving tools, and the hooked needles of knitting machines — each a long, slender, pointed instrument adapted to moving thread or fiber. The definition holds across all of them, with the sewing needle as the type: a slender pointed tool, usually of metal, that pierces or passes through material and carries the means of joining with it.
A needle is a long, slender, object with a pointed tip, usually made of metal. In sewing, the needle pierces the cloth and carries thread through it so stitches can be formed.
The first needles were used in sewing, and were often made of bone or wood. Bone needles with eyes survive from the Stone Age, long before metal needles became common.
The eye is the small hole near one end of a hand sewing needle through which the thread passes. The point enters the cloth first and the eye follows, drawing the thread through to form a stitch.