Do you remember the pretty little purse I made for my mum’s birthday? Well the plan had been to make a little needlecase to go with it, but unfortunately I had run out of time to make it. I’ve finally now got around to make it and give it to her so I thought I would share it with you.

It took me a while to decide on what to do. I knew I wanted to incorporate the same fabrics that I used for her purse, and I knew I wanted to embroider a little monogrammed initial. Other than that I was unsure. I did consider doing a half Dresden for the front cover to mirror her purse, but decided against that and go with something a little different.

I started with little 2 inch squares, using beautiful Lecien, Sevenberry and Atsuko Matsuyama fabrics my absolute favourites. In hindsight I should have used blue/purple fabrics that is more my mum’s colours than pinks, I think I was maybe too influenced by what I like than what she would like.

I then went onto embroider the little M initial. I bought the book “500 Simply Charming Designs for Embroidery” a few years ago, it’s a Japanese craft book that has been translated into English. Included in it are several alphabet patterns. As soon as I saw the lazy daisy letter designs I fell in love, and so fast forward to now I knew it would be the perfect design for my project. I had forgotten how fiddly I find lazy daisy stitch, it seems to take me a couple of attempts to get each petal/leaf to look like it’s suppose to and even then I’m 100% happy! I think I need to fill a hoop with some and just practice, practice, practice!

As I said above the front took me the longest to decide what to do, I didn’t want to detract attention from the embroidery but also wanted a bit of colour rather than it all being linen. Even though I absolutely love Japanese natural linen. In the end I decided on turning the embroidery into a patch rather than working it into the actual case and picked some really beautiful Lecien and Sevenberry.

Then onto the part I enjoy the most, the hand quilting. I love the effect of hand quilting, I think it adds a lovely charm to a project and easy enough to do on a little project like this. Hand quilting anything larger like a quilt always feels like a mammoth task and can become a little bit of a (sore!) chore. Although it is always worth it in the end!

We’ve had some beautiful weather this week and it has been such a joy to put the finishing touches to this out in the garden.

And there we have it! All finished! Such a lovely project to work on, although even a little project like this takes me twice as long to finish these days than before when I was child free. It does mean I do feel a bigger sense of achievement now when I do finish a project.