General Crafting: Compact Emergency Sewing Kit

Hello everyone, I'm back tonight with another eco-friendly craft: a compact emergency sewing kit made from an old pen tube, needles, safety pins, & thread. This craft is super simple, very handy as it can easily go in the car, purse, desk, boat, camping bag, etc., and would make a great stocking stuffer or basket filler!

Materials I Used:

~ white no logo pen tubes with caps

(reused from dried out pens, ink portion removed)

~ [not pictured] torch lighter or pen cap without holes

~ black thread (one spool per pen)

~ hand needles (min two per pen)

~ [not pictured] miniature safety pins (min one per pen)

To begin, remove the bottom pen cover then insert about 1" of thread into the tube and replace the cover.{And this is where my phone died, I apologize for the missing pictures from this tutorial!}

Now start winding the thread around the outside of the pen tube, carefully covering from the bottom of the pen to top. Scoot the thread every so often back towards the bottom so that there's enough space on the pen to hold all the thread.

When the thread is close to its end and near the top of the pen, remove the pen cap (set aside) and pen nozzle (discard or save for another craft) to insert about 1" of thread into the tube.

At this point if you need to close off the holes in your pen cap, do so carefully. If not, then skip down to the next step. I strongly suggest using a torch lighter to melt the plastic as it takes less time and gives a much smoother finish due to the focused tip of the flame.


Once the cap is ready all that's left is to put a few hand sewing needles and mini safety pins inside then replace the cap.

See, told ya it was easy! You can even make adorable mini kits by cutting the pen tube smaller. So how many will you make?