I've been thinking about needle and pin keeps a lot lately... the vintage kind. As a matter of fact, I had a difficult time sleeping the night before last, as ideas kept popping into my head. When I was designing in the decorative painting industry, I learned my lesson the hard way, i.e. no matter what time of the day or night, when an idea came into my head to get out my sketch book, do a quick line drawing and make a few notes. Too many times I said to myself that I'd remember it in the morning but alas, when morning came, I drew...literally...a blank.
Tuesday I found myself in the kitchen at 2:10 a.m. not to snack, but to sketch and make notes of my blossoming needle and pin keep. I love working with wool and cotton and that's where my thoughts were heading. Yesterday morning, bright and early, I found myself in my sewing studio measuring, cutting, and stitching, and this is what I ended up with at about 7:30 last evening.
My needle and pin keep! This is the outside front and the dimensions are 4" x 6". The birds were inspired by Ann Sutton's birds from the February block of her Tisket-A-Tasket BOM.
When you open it up, you can see a piece of vintage-looking (that word again) fabric which I sewed to the background wool, then frayed the edges to make it look...what else? Vintage! Then there's a piece of wool that I stitched onto the left side for pins and added a little pocket to hold "necessities". The dimensions when open are 6" x 8".
Then there's another wool insert that I stitched down the spine with another little pocket to hold more "needfuls". I ordered some vintage mother-of-pearl thread rings which will be sewn onto the black wool on the left to hold floss. Hopefully they'll arrive by Monday.
And finally, the heart scissors holder. I love my little needle and pin keep and I know it'll get lots of use. Happy stitching!
