Is this tzitzit? No — and the verse is still being kept

Question: by pinning a blue thread to a garment, are you making tzitzit?

No. Tzitzit as halachah defines it has requirements this does not meet and does not try to meet: the four-cornered garment, the fringes, the wrapping, the knots. Nothing here is sewn and no garment is altered. A metal piece pins a thread to a corner or an edge, and it comes off in seconds.

Question: then why do you say it keeps the commandment?

Because the verse names two things on the corner — fringes, and a thread of blue — and this is the second of them, done with real techelet, in public, on purpose. Read plainly, that is the thing the verse asks for. That is our claim, and it is narrow: it is pshat, our reading of the words, not psak. No rabbi has endorsed it.

Question: does it discharge an obligation?

No. Anyone obligated in tzitzit is still obligated in tzitzit and should wear them. There is no blessing here, no required hour, no garment it must go on, and no failing in a person who never wears one.

Question: whose approval do you have?

None, and we are not asking for any, because we are not ruling on anyone else's practice. If a rabbi or an institution objects in writing, the objection is published here in full, with a reply underneath it — and our reply can lose.

Question: is a blue thread pinned to my clothes a problem of shaatnez — wool and linen together?

It can be, and the direction matters. Shaatnez is wool and linen worn together in one garment. A linen thread does not solve the problem by itself: a linen thread pinned to a wool jacket is the same mixture as a wool thread pinned to a linen shirt. What removes the question is a thread and a garment that are not that pair — a linen thread on cotton or synthetic, or a wool thread on wool. We say which fibre each thread is, so the choice is yours to make. If you are unsure about your own garment, ask someone you trust; we are not ruling on it.