Modern Nailbinding / Nadelbinden – a new project and old projects revisited :)

On my birthday I decided to have some fun and to do something I haven’t done for quite a long time. Therefore I took one of my nailbinding needles and had some fun with turning some wool into a new cap… 🙂

I always find it very relaxing when I am working at a nailbinding project. Some of you might not be familiar with this great technique by now but nailbinding is an ancient technique which is much older than crotchet or knitting. It is an interesting technique that is worth at least a try. Well, however, that this is an old technique doesn’t mean that we can’t give it a modern touch. 🙂

After getting so many positive reactions on my facebook fanpage concerning my most recent nailbinding project, which you can see on the picture above, I decided to dig out some of my “old” modern nailbinding projects for you.

Let’s start with one of my favorite nailbinding projects:

My long nailbinded and embroidered hand/arm warmers and my matching cap. Definitely my favorite nailbinding project – so cosy, comfortable and warm! And here another good picture of the whole set for you:

And I also made some cute nailbinded snoods which I embroidered afterwards – this one is my favorite nailbinded and embroidered snood so far:

…and here a sneak peek at the rather easy but very effective embroidery on this hood:

I somehow couldn’t resist to add a nice small dragon fly besides some other simple stem stitch and chain stitch embroidery. All it takes are just some very simple embroidery techniques and a good imagination.

But – believe it or not – I don’t embroider everyone of my nailbinding projects. *lol* I thought that this following snood, which can be also used as a small vest, was beautiful as it was. Therefore I decided to not add any further embroidery to it:

…and as you can see on the next picture, it can be really also worn as a small vest. It really warms my shoulders very well:

You might ask now how you can make a snood which is wearable as a vest. Well, the solution is rather easy – you just need to make a snood that is big enough. 🙂

And I also found photos of another one of my nailbinded and fancy embroidered caps:

…and here a close up for you at the embroidery:

…and last but not least, I have a picture of one of the nailbinded and embroidered neckwarmers I made:

Yes, nailbinding can be used for many cute projects. Depending on the wool and nailbinding technique you use, you can achieve very different effects. Embroidery can be easily added on the nailbinded surface as long as you keep in mind that you are not working with a tightly woven medium which can still stretch. Techniques like the stem stitch or the chain stitch, which can also stretch a little, are perfect if you want to add embroidery on nailbinding.

If you haven’t used the the nailbinding till now, you might now like to try it out. Good instructions about how to start nailbinding can be found all over the internet. I took a look at the internet and found this two short tutorials which might help you to get started:

• Viking Lady Aine – Nalbinding; getting started with the Oslo stitch
• Dilettante – Basic Nålbinding part 1: Oslo Stitch (F1 UO/UOO)

And if you would like to read more about the history of nailbinding, you can find a rather good summery of it at Wikipedia: Nålebinding

All you really need for your first try is just some wool and a rather big needle. I used a simple big tapestry needle without tip for my very first tries of nailbinding before I got my very first nailbinding needle. 🙂

And last but not least a short book recommendation concerning nailbinding – one of the best books I found about it till now is the book “Nadelbinden – Was ist denn das?“. Unfortunately it is just available in German. You can find this book here:
Amazon.com: Nadelbinden – Was ist denn das?
Amazon.de: Nadelbinden – Was ist denn das? Geschichte und Technik einer fast vergessenen Handarbeit

I hope you enjoyed my posting about my modern nailbinding projects and I furthermore hope that I could encourage and inspire you to try nailbinding yourself. 🙂