Floral-Sprigged Sewing Fold by Margaret Light

This week’s All Stitched Up! features a cascade of flowers, so introducing Margaret Light’s Floral-Sprigged Sewing Fold from her book A Fine Tradition, seems perfectly apt.

Margaret’s vintage-style sewing fold is a celebration of flowers, from the beautiful embroidery on the outside to the delightfully surprising floral-themed interior.

Margaret tells us that she gets a huge amount of inspiration from historical pattern books, particularly those from the 16th and 17th centuries. However, as is probably obvious from the careful observation of details in all of Margaret’s work, she is also a keen gardener.

As such, Margaret will often draw plants from her own garden, or if out and about, she’ll stop to take photographs whenever an interesting plant or flower is spotted, then head home to sketch it.

The result is a design that is both historic and modern. This particular project is worked on natural herringbone linen, which is the first aspect to give it a vintage feel.

It folds into three different parts, each decorated on the outside with a different type of flower. The centre panel features subtle pink spotted carnations; there are delicate bluebells at one end and a bold purple iris at the other. Each flower is surrounded by leaves and stalks rendered in an array of stitches giving a pleasing texture to the exterior of this piece.

The inside is also a delight. Margaret has carefully thought about the practicalities of a sewing fold and determined that it needs pockets, a pincushion, a place for scissors and another for a thimble.

She then considered how she could carry the floral theme through using felt and stitches. The result is a wonderful iris shaped scissor holder with a bud designed to hold the thimble. The scissor fob is shaped like a bluebell, and the pincushion is decorated with a carnation.

Finally, a handy pocket is included and the whole design is completed with herringbone stitch to complement the rest of the piece.

We’re sure we keep repeating ourselves but honestly, you can never have enough sewing accessories!

Especially when they are as lovely and as useful as Margaret’s Floral Sprigged Sewing-Fold.

Having a different sewing-fold for every project and every sewing bag seems a perfectly reasonable thing to do. And frankly, that is probably all the excuse you need to get started on this lovely, vintage project that shows Margaret Light’s design skills in all of their glory.

Make Your Own Floral-Sprigged Sewing Fold

Step 1 – Purchase Project Instructions

Floral-Sprigged Sewing Fold from the book A Fine Tradition includes a pincushion and pockets for scissors, thimble and accessories, with a bluebell emery fob, and is decorated with carnations, irises and bluebells.

Step 2 – Purchase Ready-To-Stitch Kit

The Inspirations Ready-To-Stitch kit for Floral-Sprigged Sewing Fold includes everything* you need to re-create this gorgeous sewing accessory: Fabrics (unprinted), wool felts, fabric stabiliser, interfacing, ribbon, buttons, sewing thread, emery powder, embroidery threads and needles.

*Please Note: To cater for flexibility of purchase, instructions are not included with our kits. For step-by-step directions on how to create this project, please refer to the book.