Inspired by an Instagram Post

I've recently become intrigued with Sashiko (pronounced: SA shi ko) embroidery. My stitcherly friend, Poppy, brought me back a little kit from her textile tour of Japan last fall. I really enjoyed this kind of slow stitching. 

Through the magic of algorithms, an interesting reel on the subject popped up on my Facebook page and I followed the link to this creator's Instagram page. 

Using some of the fabric I had purchased from Kallisti Quilts, I made this sample project using evagustems instructions.

It involved stitching the horizontal and vertical 'dashes' then weaving through them.

Looking through other videos by evagustems, I thought this triangular needlebook would be fun to do.

The sewn-in felt creates a little pocket for scissors and a couple of flaps for needles.

I don't have variegated sashiko floss and I thought plain white or just one colour wouldn't be exciting enough so I decided to try another stitching pattern using the white floss that I do have. I perused one of my new Sashiko books:

and found this pattern that had the right number of horizontal lines for the lines I had already drawn on the fabric. I think it's called a floral cross pattern.

I had spaced my lines quite far apart (almost 1 cm) so completed the grid accordingly using my new, white, heat-erasable pen (thank you Poppy). The chalk from the chalk pencil I previously used didn't hold up to all the scrunching and manipulation of the fabric whilst stitching. The pen, on the other hand, created a faint line which showed up much better after a few seconds and didn't rub off until I used heat from my iron. Some people use the hot setting on a hair dryer or a flat iron for hair-styling to remove the lines.

I did a screenshot of evagustems's pattern template and enlarged it on my printer to what I believed was the appropriate size. I didn't take any photos in progress of fully finishing it, but this is what I ended up with - a zoomed-in version of the floral cross design.

I used stiff, fusible interfacing on the back of the stitching and this stash fabric for the lining:

When I folded the thing up like the original, it didn't work well and I didn't want to turn it back inside out to take a bit off one of the long sides to make it work better. Instead, I'm folding it this way - the two ends to the middle 

then a fold in the middle.

This modification will change how I attach the felt inside as I want one of the folds to act as a flap over the felt scissor pocket. I still need to find some appropriate felt in my stash and sew on a dome fastener.

I have ordered some sashiko templates so will stitch some smaller scale designs when they arrive.

It is quite surprising how much time I spent thinking, planning, selecting a design, selecting a fabric, and problem-solving for this project before even starting to stitch - several episodes of my 'The Gilmore Girls' binge-a-thon.

This project satisfied a lot of my favourite things:

• an easy sashiko pattern
• a useful item
• another opportunity to try a different design
• using materials I had on hand
• an attractive item as a result
• more ideas for future projects.