Sequins and Silver

Santa, bless him, gave my girls some Sequin Art kits for Christmas. They love arts and crafts and pretty much sat down all day on Christmas Day, pushing pins through the sequins and into the polystyrene bases.

It’s amazing what can keep them occupied. After a while, my youngest began to complain that the tips of her fingers were getting sore. The pins used are normal fabric pins so do tend to leave little dents in delicate little digits. Umm. I said. You know what you need …. Quick as a flash they both cried out “Thimbles!” and dashed to the thimble display units.

These are the thimbles they came back with.

My eldest picked the red plastic one for its cool colour and lightness. My youngest picked the little silver one because it was just the right size. Good choice I said. It fits so well because it’s a child’s sterling silver thimble and judging from the dints, it’s had a fair bit of use already. The fact that it is silver is probably the main reason why it is so badly dented.

Silver is a soft metal whereas needles and pins are normally made from a harder metal. Its no surprise then that silver thimbles tend to suffer damage over prolonged use. That’s why back in the 1880s, a jeweller from Halifax called Charles Horner, started to make silver thimbles with an inner layer of steel. He patented his idea and called it the Dorcas Thimble. An instant hit due to it being both decorative and hardwearing. Clever chap. I don’t have one of these in my collection – yet. I’m working on it.

The taller silver one in the middle of the picture is just silver coloured metal and is my preferred choice for sewing with. I’ve used that for general every day sewing, for quilt making and of course, pushing pins into polystyrene.

Happy New Year.