Second Needle Case

Needle Case #2
Needle Case #2

Tomorrow is my only day at work before Thanksgiving until December 2. I am cooking for Thanksgiving and ‘need’ the prep time. I also need to go to the dentist and clean up the house and sew and laze around. The whole Grama thing has been really hard and even though I was off for a week at the end of October/beginning of November, I need more time off.

None of that is either here nor there, except that you should watch for the Pie Day photos that I will tweet out. I don’t know if you like it, but I always have fun tweeting Pie Day photos. I plan to make a pie for my mom’s priest who was awesome while my grandmother was sick. He was a great support to her and is a super nice guy.

So, two paragraphs in and no discussion of sewing. Let’s get to it. I made a second needle case. I couldn’t help myself. I needed to get it right. It still isn’t exactly right, but is much better. I did it last Sunday and then worked on the hand stitching on Monday night.

The problem this time is that I put batting in and I think I just don’t like batting for small accessories like this. I think batting should be in quilts and something thinner (not sure what yet) should be in journal covers and needle cases.

The changes I made to the pattern are:

  • Put ShapeFlex on all the major pieces. This gave it more body, but not quite enough to forgo the batting.
  • Machine sewed the ribbon on to the main outside piece right after adding the ShapeFlex to the fabric and then pinned it carefully out of the way
  • No binding; sewed around and then turned the whole thing
  • Stitched the top and the bottom of the pocket accent (directions say bottom only)
Needle Case #2 Open
Needle Case #2 Open

This pattern really doesn’t take very long. I am going to Joann to see about some ShapeFlex sometime this week and may look for fusible flannel as well. I don’t know if there is such a thing, but I will look. Flannel might be sticky enough without the fusible.