Put together a vintage style sewing kit to catch and fasion emergency.

Are you supplied, by the way, with a mending outfit? Every seamstress needs a work-bag, well fitted with the things she is likely to use.

Just the other day I saw a tiny sewing kit, which was the cutest thing imaginable! It was made of pink silk belting, held in shape by satin-covered cardboard sides. It was three inches long by two inches wide, just the dimensions of its little embroidery scissors, and less than one inch high, exactly the height, in fact, of its small aluminum thimble. But the finest thing about it was that it contained a complete mending outfit. There was a double fold of fine white flannel, an inch by an inch and a half, on one side of which were assorted needles, and on the other side a dozen small safety-pins. A tiny silk button-bag, an inch and a half square, held a few pearl buttons of different sizes and a dozen assorted hooks and eyes, both black and white.

Attached to one corner with a few strong stitches was a tiny emery. Loose in the bottom were six tiny cards, half an inch square, each wrapped with a few yards of thread (coarse and fine black and white cotton, black silk and black darning cotton). There was also a bodkin, a darning-needle, a roll of, perhaps, half a yard of narrow tape, and a ball of wax. Several large safety-pins completed the equipment.

This little sewing kit was carried by one of my friends on all her travels, because it could be slipped into even the smallest hand-bag. It provided always for the button suddenly missing from glove or underwear, the rip or rent in a garment, the mysterious hole in a stocking. If you should care to make one for yourself, I will tell you how to do it, but it would make a lovely present for you to give to mother or sister or your dearest friend.

First lay your small embroidery scissors on a piece of paper and mark off their length.   Then cut an oblong from the paper half an inch longer than the scissors and three-quarters of an inch wide, and round off the corners. This is your pattern, and by it you must cut four pieces of cardboard just the same size. Cover each piece smoothly on one side with plain silk, catching the edges down with crisscross stitches. Now place the uncovered sides of two pieces together and overcast them neatly. Do the same with the other two pieces and your two sides are finished.
A piece of silk belting of the same shade is needed for the body of the case. It must, of course, be a trifle wider than the handle of your scissors, for you do not want them to fit too snugly. Take one of the silk-covered sides in your hands, and fit the belting around the edge as shown in the illustration. Overhand from one side around both ends, leaving an opening at the top, along the edge, but allow the belting to lap about an inch to cover the opening. Hem the raw ends. Then whip neatly to the other cardboard side in the same way. The end of belting is left loose to lay over the opening when you are through. Lastly, fasten a piece of baby ribbon twelve inches long to the loose end of the belting, so that you can tie the case up.

Have I made all this clear? For example: if it takes nine inches to go around the side pieces nd lap, and jour scissors are one inch and three-quarters wide through the handles, then the belting, or other heavy ribbon, must be two inches wide and nine inches long.

~ Sewing for little girls by Foster, Olive Hyde