Felted wool needlecases...

School's out for Christmas! Today was my last day of college this year. I like to take a little something in for my fellow students to mark the start of the holidays, that's just the kinda gal I am ;) . A couple of years ago it was homemade Elderflower Champagne (literally the best taste in the world!). Last year I made some dinky little pin cushions for everyone. This year I thought I'd whip up some needle cases and try my hand at some embroidery in the process. I kept it kitsch and silly. The overall effect is definately handmade, but I think they turned out pretty cute!

The blue felted wool that I used for the main body of the cases came as part of a joblot I picked up from freecycle.  The inside cover from thrifted fabric. The coloured felt was left from another project and the embroidery floss and buttons were all from my stash. So there was no outlay at all for these. In case you're interested, here's what I did...
I found something roughly the size and shape I wanted (yes that's an allotment card. I took on an allotment this week. Eeep!) and used it as a temlate to mark out my needle cases on the felted wool...

I cut out the number I needed plus a few extra in case I messed up...

The felted wool was a little too floppy on it's own and as I also planned to embroider the covers I interfaced using heavy weight iron on interfacing, a few mm in from the edges...

I cut the "inside covers" from a medium weave pure cotton (a thrifted curtain to be precise)and pinked the edges to limit any fraying. They are marginally smaller than the needle case but large enough to obscure the interfacing...

Then I applique'd (does applique have a verb form??!) and embroidered each cover with a different design using felt scraps, buttons, beads and embroidery floss(sorry about the picture quality. Light levels have been awful!)....

Sewed the "inside covers"  on to hide the back of all the stitching etc et voila!

I sewed with the RS up to make sure I didn't ruin things by sewing over the applique and used a dark thread on the spool and a cream thread on the bobbin to match the stitching to the colour of the two fabrics...

They're not perfect, but considering they were made from just what I had at hand, not too shabby either, and they were certainly snapped up at college with lots of  "oohs" and "ahhs" and exclamations of "did you make these" Ofcourse I concluded that they were just being polite but I did at least refrain from pointing out all the mistakes, lol! I'm getting better ;)
Px