Embroidered Needle Case

No matter where I go, you can pretty much bet that I'm going to have some small needle work project packed away in either my handbag or a quilted tote.

I just can't sit still and look at a magazine in a waiting room or people watch, even though there are some pretty interesting characters out and about these days.  I'd rather have busy hands and a creative mind working away than to do anything else.  
A few months ago I emptied out a cinnamon shaker making the boys some toast, so I washed out the shaker thinking it would make a nifty sewing needle case. It worked okay for a while, but I got tired of having to empty out the whole jar just to find the right size needle for the project I was working on. My fingers don't quite work as well as they used to and those little needles can be the devil to get up when you have them scattered all over.

Well, a few nights ago I was reading up on quilting ideas and ran across a cute little sewing needle case someone had made. Very simple to make if you don't have alot of time to invest in it. 

Needing a break from the 300 lb. Minky Monster, (okay, I'm exaggerating...it's only 200!), I spent the late hours of last night and part of this afternoon embroidering a little sugar tree onto a piece of the boys old blue jeans. I hacked a small bit of homespun (shhh! can't talk about the homespun yet...it's a surprise!) off to make the binding and dug through the fabric shelves for some bright pretty yellow, reddish pink and green fabrics to match. The binding gave me a bit of trouble for some reason, maybe because I'm not used to working with homespun, but it did come out okay otherwise.    I drew the tree by hand with a pencil and just embroidered the leaves wherever I thought they would look nice.  The whole thing is just a little lopsided but that's okay, too.  I like it all the same.