For Christmas 2014, my husband bought me a ‘demi kit pack’ from the French website Les Brodeuses Parisiennes to make a lingerie bag. He’d had a bit of a helping hand from Santa’s little elves to know what to get me – I’d had my eye on the bag for over a year!
The demi kit pack contained the fabric bag ready to embroider (with a front panel of 28 count linen) and the colour block chart, and suggestions for thread colours using DMC stranded cottons. By Christmas Day lunchtime I had pulled the threads I wanted to use from my stash (using Anchor stranded cottons instead of the DMC), and by Christmas Day teatime I was stitching 🙂
The design is very pretty, and so typical of French style.
To make it easier to do the cross stitch, the lining of the flap has been left partly undone, so that you can get your hand inside. When the stitching is finished, you just slip stitch the opening closed.
The chart includes a floral alphabet, so that you can personalise the pouch. As my initials are JG, that’s what I stitched on mine, but I had to alter the ‘J’ slightly, as I find that most J’s in alphabets are rendered so curly that they become unreadable. In this case, it just about works!
The finished pouch measures about ten inches by twelve. I wanted a pouch that I could keep small embroidery projects in when I’m travelling, as I travel quite a lot, and I don’t like using plastic bags for my stitching. I thought this would be much nicer 🙂
However, now that the pouch itself is finished, I fancy making a scissor keeper and maybe a needle book using motifs from the pouch, to keep inside it, so I’m going to sort through my fabric stash now to see if I have some 28 count fabric the same colour as the pouch flap.
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Janet Granger's Blog 
Very pretty Janet.
Hazel c uk
This is beautiful Janet.
I love the finished product and I fell in love with it when you showed it to us at Christmas. I loved the site and ordered two items, including this pouch. I am so pleased you have finished it. I wanted to ask you how many threads have you counted from the bottom or, alternatively, from the top. I have sewn a vertical line for the middle (I may be out by 1 or 2 threads as it is uneven weave), but am undecided about the distance as there are no instructions/suggestions. I decided to do it in silk so it took a while to get all the threads in Madeira and Soie de Paris and try to work out the conversions, and now I can’t make up my mind how high or low from the border to start. I would appreciate your help. Your positioning looks perfect.
I love yours.
Actually, on second thoughts, all I need is the distance in cm rather than the thread count. This will give me a rough idea.
I started the deep red rose in the centre of the swag along the bottom edge of the flap 2.5 cm up from the seam. Or if you want to start stitching from the top, it’s 1.3cm. I guessed this place to start – I too found the instructions a bit vague on this point!
Many thanks. Very useful.