Felted Needle Case

I have another project I completed a while back that I have not posted photos of.

I helped my buddy, Liz Kettle, in one of her Art & Soul workshops last year.
It was a machine felting class.
I had never tried machine felting before (only needle felting) so I was excited to learn as I helped her.

I felted the base of the piece while in the classroom - a very quick, very basic machine felting.
Very quick and easy since I was (mostly) helping out.

I was undecided about what I was going to make out of the felted base until the very end. I considered creating a small book cover, a small clutch or something like that.
I really didn't want to make a fold-over book (with the signatures that are stitched into the book) since I knew that it would fill up quickly (or not at all).
And I didn't really need a small clutch that fancy (since I was beading it) so I let it  just sit there for a bit while I made my mind up.

One day I picked it up and went back to work on it (without a notion of what the end project would be) because I just loved the hand stitching so much.
While stitching, I misplaced (lost) one of my favorite needles and I found myself wishing that I had a needle case to put them in.

Heyyyyyy...a needle case.

So I decided right then to do just that - make a fancy needle case.
And I am so glad that I did!
All I have to do now is grab it and I am set for ANY type of hand stitching.

Here's several (a lot) of photos cause I just love the close-ups of the tedious, I mean small and creative, stitching.

It's about 4 x 6 inches when folded up.

It looks like I used a piece of black wool or thick commercial
felt as the base for machine felting.

I backed the case with commercial felt (thin) and made
the "pages" from wool that I gathered from
an old skirt. It really made the pages
nice and thick.

I just noticed that I still have the wrap around cording
pinned in place. I did this when I was trying to decide
how long to make my cording.
I'll try to remember to fix that (lol).

I braided beautiful hand dyed gimp for the wrap around closure.

lots and lots of stitching

lots and lots of beading

The green thread to the left of the green yarn (on the right)
is sewing thread.  I used a lot of that in the stitching.
My friend Liz donated a lot of the other thread as I didn't have
a lot of embroidery thread (I am working to remedy that though).

Well, I am feeling pretty good about sharing not one but TWO completed projects on my blog recently!

I wish that there was a way for all of you to share yours with me.

Oh wait. 

There is!

You could leave a comment with a link to your projects or just email me with that info. I'd really love to see them.

Would you do that?

I'd love to see them!

I don't read as many blogs as I use to. Not many at all.

For a couple of reasons - it can suck up so much time and I don't really want to flavor my own work with everyone else's work.

And Pinterest - wow weeee. 

I can hardly go there without spending AT LEAST an hour or more looking around!

Lots of beautiful things there though.

Anyway, send me links to your projects!!