Before we get into the items, here are some other potential containers I considered:
The three round containers have sewing supplies in them already that some unknown German sewer put into them. I bought an old dilapidated wooden sewing basket at a German flea market, when we lived in Germany, but I gave away that sewing basket. I kept most of the old sewing supplies inside, because that’s why I bought that sewing basket.
Here are two small sewing kits – one’s from the 70s or 80s that my mother gave me. The tiny ceramic lid box came with needles, thread and a thimble inside. I don’t remember where I found that:
So, let’s look at the sewing kits:
Lens wipe, because I wear glasses, folding scissors, thimble, two needle threaders, thread card, seam ripper, band-aids, masking tape wrapped on a plastic card, piece of fleece with fabric clips, straight pins and needles.
The thimble I pulled from an old Tupperware container that holds a lot of cheap metal thimbles. My grandmother had an old glass coffee jar filled with these thimbles and I wanted that jar when my grandmother died, despite my mother and aunt shaking their heads and lamenting about my grandmother keeping junk like that. Moving around the Army, that coffee jar got broken at some point, so I put those thimbles in a Tupperware bowl. I can imagine after I’m gone my daughters will be shaking their heads about me having a bowl of old thimbles, just like my mother and aunt did. All I can say is I have several types of better thimbles, but I’ve often grabbed a cheap thimble that fits my finger from my grandmother’s jar of thimbles, and they work just fine. My grandmother raised her family during the Great Depression and she kept her home functioning in an orderly fashion. Despite being dirt poor, they still thrived.
There are two types of needle threaders – the metal one works for a needle with a larger eye and threading yarn, ribbon or cording.
The thread card I cut from an old manila folder and it has black and white all-purpose thread and gray dual-duty button and craft thread.
Here are the three spools of thread:
The seam ripper I kept from a military sewing kit.
In my previous post on sewing kits, I mentioned how much I liked the thread in the sewing kit the US Army issued me. Well, I also kept the thread from that kit. It came braided in a hank and it’s so easy to pull one piece of thread out at a time. I’ve used thread from this hank many times, even though I have whole spools of these threads colors:
In that previous post I also mentioned sewing with dental floss would be better than trying to sew with cheap polyester thread. My running stitches aren’t perfect, but I stitched two rows with dental floss and it’s easy to sew with:
It’s not hard to put together a sewing kit or to learn a few basic stitches. I taught my kids how to stitch using plastic canvas when they were in elementary school, but I had started them off before they were in school with sewing cards. I made some cute sewing cards for my granddaughters when they were little and I gave some to friends with small children too. Even 4-5 year-olds can learn basic sewing stitches, so assuredly adults can too.
libertybelle diaries 