Thursday, November 16, 2017

sachet for my draw

I was at one of my favorite thrift store here in France last month and I ran a cross this:
A well used, badly damaged, vintage linen sheet. You can see some of the damage on the lower right hand side. It is damaged enough not to use as a bed sheet, but it is in good enough shape to cut apart and make something new. The price was right so I bought it.

I want to use the initials for something later, but the embroidery below it was mostly in good shape so I thought I would make some sachets filled with lavender. Right after I bought the sheet, as luck would have it, at the Saturday market here in my little french town, was a man selling lavender by the kilo or by the bag. He had a special on buying 5 of the little bags so that is what I did. 
I had been thinking about that sheet and what I would like to do with it.

I have a Pinterest board called "sachet" where I collect ideas. I collected pictures of many sachet bags and since I found the lavender, I thought I would give it a go.

Due to the size of the embroidery design from the sheet, a 6 inch or 15 cm square seemed to be just right. Unlike many of the Pinterest designs, I was dealing with something with embroidered holes so it would need to be lined. I cut the lining from the un-embroidered portion of the sheet.
I cut the lining the same size but when I sewed them together I used a 1/2 inch seam allowance. I used a 1/4 inch seam allowance for the outside, embroidered portion of the sachet. I stuffed the lining into the embroidered piece once it was sewn and filled the lining with one of the bags of lavender. 

The last thing to do was to hand stitch shut the lining and then the embroidered section. The sheet top edge gave me 6 undamaged 6-inch embroidered squares. 

I got 3 sachets out of the sheet as I decided to make both sides have embroidery
I have lavender left so I expect there will be more to come.

2 comments:

  1. Excellent re-use of the stitched sections, and a charming finish!

    Damaged vintage linens are my favorite ground for new embroidery projects - the linen used in them is far heavier and of better quality than any yard goods I can afford. I've bought pieces that were no longer suitable for their original use, and excerpted the good bits for my own projects. Here's a sampler stitched on the one good side of a pillowcase (the other side was too shredded and stained to be rescued): https://kbsalazar.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/anything.jpg?w=620

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