Tutorial: How to Make a Needlebook

Needlebooks come in quite handy for keeping track of your pins and needles (and make a charming addition to any sewing basket).

I’ve created several of these lovely and portable cases to use while working on large sewing projects, associating each unique design with pleasant memories. Making needlebooks is a wonderful way to practice embroidery . . . and they make lovely gifts, too!

Here is how you can make your own {primrose style} needlebook . . .

The Supplies

• Felt (wool or cotton)
• Embroidery Floss
• Needle
• Scissors
• Circle pattern from card stock (three inches in diameter)

The Directions (click the pictures to enlarge)

1. Following your pattern, cut out four pieces of felt (two for the outside cover and two for the inside).

2. On the back of the front cover piece, make a knot in the felt.

3. Bring the needle to the front and by Back Stitching, sew a circle in the middle of the cover. This will be the center of the Primrose.

4. Fill the center of the flower with Double French Knots (as shown in directions 4-6). Pull your thread through the font and wrap the thread around the needle twice.

5. Hold tightly onto the thread about an inch from the stitch.

6. Insert needle into the felt, making sure that it is right next to the original stitch. If it goes back into the same hole that it came up from, the stitch will pull through to the back and need to be redone. Pull thread all the way through until a little knot appears.

7. Back Stitch the outline of the flower petals.

8. With the straight stitch, add three little lines at the base of each petal to give it depth.

9. The Seed Stitches are small straight stitches randomly sewn every which way. Sew these around the outside of the flower close together and gradually farther apart as you stitch away from the petals.

10. Blanket Stitch around the edge of the front and inside two pieces, leaving about one and a half inches of the circumference un-stitched.

11. Place the other two pieces on the back side of the first two with the second inside piece facing the already sewn inside and the back outside piece facing outwards.

Continue the blanket stitch on all four pieces for the un-sewn inch and a half. Then finish sewing the blanket stitch around the edge of the back side two pieces.

12. Run the thread through the felt where it cannot be seen from the inside or outside. Bring the thread to the surface of the outside and double knot.

One of the beauties of needlebooks, is that you can take this idea and create a wide assortment of your own variations, whether they be for personal use, decoration, or gifts!

There are endless possibilities to the extra beauty you can create using different styles, sizes, shapes, embroidered decorations, etc!

-Emily Rose @ Simply Vintagegirl

This tutorial was originally created for the beautiful magazine “The Girlhood Home Companion,” a magazine for daughters, mothers, and grandmothers published by Remembrance Press.