A hankie a day

So much fun to be had rummaging through my neat piles of fabric to find seven suitably hankie-like fabrics. Many sweet and cheery prints were discounted as not being gentle enough on the nose but the good thing is that only a smallish amount of fabric is needed for each hankie and so my overflowing drawers came up with this selection

 Lovely to remember the makes the fabric was originally intended for - the green dot type a sunglasses case for Patch's teacher last summer, the yellow gingham the contrast panel on an Oliver + s popover sundress made for Esme gosh maybe five years ago - it is a beautifully soft gingham - then, seaside houses used for a birthday bag for Kate, boats just because and used for many a thing, cameras actually purchased especially for Linda's washbag last year, red gingham - again oh so soft - from making P a duvet cover and blue stars waiting patiently to be made into a quilt for P. Still.

I thought this would be a simple and satisfying make and happily cut out the squares and selected a contrast thread for the hemming. And that is where these stopped being oh so simple as I merrily decided that what these birthday hankies needed was a rolled hem. And so I started with my bright contrast thread and oh my. Those rolled hems are not as easy and not as straight as I hoped for! Once I got started on a side it went swimmingly but to stop the machine eating the fabric I found the only thing to do was to start stitching a little way in from the end. This meant that each end of each side then needed to be hand sewn and, well, not quite the hem I was planning. Next time they will have a simple stitched hem and probably look much neater for it! Though they do look lovely all in a pile

And it is fun getting texts from Linda informing me which hankie she has selected for a certain day. Such fun! Happy nose-blowing Linda!