Needle Cases

 At my craft group, someone showed a needle case they'd been given and wondered if we could do something similar. I had a think, and decided to go with an Eileen Hull Bigz die.

My first attempt was ok, but there were a couple of things I decided to change.

I also used some very old Sizzix dies for the scissors, needle and thread which I cut out of rose gold Sizzix Surfacez. (What's the singular of that?) Anyway, my base here was 300gsm card, and I covered it with a scrap of cloth I've had knocking around for ages. I cut some felt remnants I had through the die too, but using folded felt on the die up to the first fold line. The result had a few issues. First, the cover is quite floppy. Not a major issue, but not what I wanted. The other thing is that, using the die to cut the felt resulted in pages that were a bit too big. They fit, but polyester felt is quite stretchy, and the result just didn't look neat enough for me. I used double-sided sticky sheets to adhere the fabric, and finished it off with some lace and elastic cord to make a closure.

My second attempt I tried something a bit different, and I'd also bought some new felt so I could choose colours to fit!

This time, I used some grey board - in fact it was the back of an old notepad. That gave a much firmer basis. For decoration, this time, I used some ribbon, and then a Tonic die from its Sew Pretty range which I decorated with metallic gold thread.

This time, I cut the felt by hand. This gave a wonkier result, but the needle case itself looks much better.

I took a bit of the offcut from the cover (grey board covered in fabric both sides) and cut it to make a loop as show. I adhered it with tacky glue. I think I need to come up with a better option (elastic maybe?) as the scissors fall out if the case is upside-down. I'll continue to give it some thought!