I would like to get a bigger desk with enough space on top to accommodate my ability to both spread out and create piles, and enough space underneath for me to cross my legs without jamming them, but I’m reluctant to do so because I’d lose my sewing drawer.
Lovely piece, Jane. My sewing box was made by my grandfather from cedar wood, and has an elaborate chrysanthemum carved on the lid. The lid lifts up to reveal a tray with two compartments and a pincushion between, upholstered in blue corduroy by my grandmother. This lifts out to reveal a deeper single compartment. It has a needle book made by my grandmother from offcuts of dress fabric and flannel leaves. And embroidery scissors shaped like a bird. A thimble to fit my 10yo hands (which doesn’t fit now). And a little tin of buttons that were on my grandmothers and fathers rompers when they were babies. Like you I like the feeling of having everything just where I can put my hand on it.
'The Button Box - Lifting the Lid of Women's Lives' by Lynn Knight is a good read on this subject. I am typing this in my home in a Devon village listening to the church bells ringing out for the Sunday morning service, the sun is shining, there are plants to planted in the newly dug flower beds. Could be worse.
As ever, a highlight of Sunday morning. There’s a large antiques emporium nearby, and a few times I’ve seen old sewing boxes there, with the content still in tact. Whenever I see them, I have a nearly irresistible urge to rescue them, until I remember I live in a small terrace house that doesn’t have space for a sewing box collection!
The Dress Diary of Mrs Anne Sykes - Secrets from a Victorian Woman's Wardrobe by Kate Strasdin would be of interest to anyone interested in dressmaking and history. The author was given a scrapbook of fabric samples almost 200 years old and gradually unravels the mystery of the owner and her friends and family who she collected the samples from. I bet their sewing boxes were amazing!
I bought a super large desk from ebay last year - big enough to spread out on and then when it arrived it wouldn’t go through the doors of the room so my husband had to cut a vital three inches off each leg. I am hoping he will restore these so i can curl my legs whilst being at the desk which I have not yet managed to do at all due to building work, the needs of the dog but mainly the NHS and work. But I have plans…..I have two sewing boxes - a shaker one my husband bought me the first year we were married. It came with the most fantastic pin cushion and amongst other things contains my sons premature baby milk storage bottle and the bootees that my best friends Mum knitted for him when he was a 27 weeker. I also have my Mums midcentury box which is big and the most sensible box I have ever seen. I think Dad would have bought it from Heals. It contains the patchwork pin cushion I made for Mum when I was about 11. Memories of her sewing everything for me including my ballet tutu’s everytime I open it. I also have inherited all my Mother in law’s reels of thread and darning things - these are all in cheese biscuit tins carefully reused from Christmas’s past I suspect. Such happy things gathered and preserved with care. Sadly I fear it will all be thrown out after me as our daughter has no interest in anything like that and is not sentimental.
Poor Jane Carlyle…not only mending husband’s garments but also preparing all the easy-to-digest puddings/oatmeals/gruels for his dyspeptic stomach, trying to lessen the house noise for his sensitive ears etc. It seemed to me her life was needlessly claustrophobic. It should be the Carlyles’ House…she made it after all.
This is one of my favourite pieces. My mother learnt dressmaking and pattern making in Italy and later migrated to Australia where she put her skills to work making all her clothes as well as ours - my sisters and I. She also knitted, crocheted, smocked, embroidered. She had some beautiful pieces in her Glory Box which she would take out to air regularly and then put straight back in again because they were never used. They were to pass on to her daughters. She taught us to sew and knit and everything else. I have always had a thing for sewing baskets and button tins. Getting your own sewing basket - mine was a brown and white one with a floral satin lining - seemed like a rite of passage for us. I have inherited mums button box now and can still identify most of the clothes they came from. I don’t sew now other than repairs but every time I open my sewing drawer I always feel like a teenager learning how to sew. Mum hasn’t passed. She moved into a nursing home in 2021 with fading memory and eyesight. But she still remembers how to knit and doesn’t need to see in order to do it. Thank you 🩷
Oh to be well organised! I have a huge lidded sewing box made by my Grandpa, 2 wooden cantilever work boxes and 5 work baskets, some inherited and some charity shop finds, as well as a charming German circular lidded box covered in red fabric with a tiny pattern. All have a variety of unrelated things inside; one day I’ll have a Handsewing one, a Mending one, a Cross-stitch one, an Embroidery one and a Dressmaking one, one for threads one for notions and one for scissors. Until then I’ll just have to keep looking in them all until I find that for which I’m searching!
My great-grandfather was a tailor, quite successful, three shops dotted around Lincolnshire. I have some of his wax, chalk, a bodkin or two, some thimbles & a tiny little olive green silk pincushion filled with emery. Very precious.
I can relate to putting pencils and other inappropriate items through collar points/corners, sigh. I have a lovely collection of old tins for my sewing accoutrements. We had a lovely Haberdashery in Totnes years ago, but the owners retired without being able to sell the business. So sad.
What a lovely piece... thank you! The tablecloth from Carlyle's house is just beautiful as are the Lucie Rie buttons. And what a great store front in Lisbon. So many inspiring things to look at.
This is lovely. When I was a child there were two haberdashery stores within walking distance of our home, both run by sisters, but the larger one also had a brother who worked in the front of the store where more sturdy items were sold. There were haberdashery departments in stores in the city centre but these small local shops were like little jewel boxes Nowadays there are only two large chain stores in the city that have what seems a limited supply of items. At home, for threads, I use my mother's old wooden sewing box that concertinas out each side. Each of my grandchildren has spent happy hours rearranging the contents by colour or their own design, and doing the same with buttons stored in five Bonne Maman jars.
Lovely piece, Jane. My sewing box was made by my grandfather from cedar wood, and has an elaborate chrysanthemum carved on the lid. The lid lifts up to reveal a tray with two compartments and a pincushion between, upholstered in blue corduroy by my grandmother. This lifts out to reveal a deeper single compartment. It has a needle book made by my grandmother from offcuts of dress fabric and flannel leaves. And embroidery scissors shaped like a bird. A thimble to fit my 10yo hands (which doesn’t fit now). And a little tin of buttons that were on my grandmothers and fathers rompers when they were babies. Like you I like the feeling of having everything just where I can put my hand on it.
'The Button Box - Lifting the Lid of Women's Lives' by Lynn Knight is a good read on this subject. I am typing this in my home in a Devon village listening to the church bells ringing out for the Sunday morning service, the sun is shining, there are plants to planted in the newly dug flower beds. Could be worse.
As ever, a highlight of Sunday morning. There’s a large antiques emporium nearby, and a few times I’ve seen old sewing boxes there, with the content still in tact. Whenever I see them, I have a nearly irresistible urge to rescue them, until I remember I live in a small terrace house that doesn’t have space for a sewing box collection!
The Dress Diary of Mrs Anne Sykes - Secrets from a Victorian Woman's Wardrobe by Kate Strasdin would be of interest to anyone interested in dressmaking and history. The author was given a scrapbook of fabric samples almost 200 years old and gradually unravels the mystery of the owner and her friends and family who she collected the samples from. I bet their sewing boxes were amazing!
I bought a super large desk from ebay last year - big enough to spread out on and then when it arrived it wouldn’t go through the doors of the room so my husband had to cut a vital three inches off each leg. I am hoping he will restore these so i can curl my legs whilst being at the desk which I have not yet managed to do at all due to building work, the needs of the dog but mainly the NHS and work. But I have plans…..I have two sewing boxes - a shaker one my husband bought me the first year we were married. It came with the most fantastic pin cushion and amongst other things contains my sons premature baby milk storage bottle and the bootees that my best friends Mum knitted for him when he was a 27 weeker. I also have my Mums midcentury box which is big and the most sensible box I have ever seen. I think Dad would have bought it from Heals. It contains the patchwork pin cushion I made for Mum when I was about 11. Memories of her sewing everything for me including my ballet tutu’s everytime I open it. I also have inherited all my Mother in law’s reels of thread and darning things - these are all in cheese biscuit tins carefully reused from Christmas’s past I suspect. Such happy things gathered and preserved with care. Sadly I fear it will all be thrown out after me as our daughter has no interest in anything like that and is not sentimental.
Poor Jane Carlyle…not only mending husband’s garments but also preparing all the easy-to-digest puddings/oatmeals/gruels for his dyspeptic stomach, trying to lessen the house noise for his sensitive ears etc. It seemed to me her life was needlessly claustrophobic. It should be the Carlyles’ House…she made it after all.
This is one of my favourite pieces. My mother learnt dressmaking and pattern making in Italy and later migrated to Australia where she put her skills to work making all her clothes as well as ours - my sisters and I. She also knitted, crocheted, smocked, embroidered. She had some beautiful pieces in her Glory Box which she would take out to air regularly and then put straight back in again because they were never used. They were to pass on to her daughters. She taught us to sew and knit and everything else. I have always had a thing for sewing baskets and button tins. Getting your own sewing basket - mine was a brown and white one with a floral satin lining - seemed like a rite of passage for us. I have inherited mums button box now and can still identify most of the clothes they came from. I don’t sew now other than repairs but every time I open my sewing drawer I always feel like a teenager learning how to sew. Mum hasn’t passed. She moved into a nursing home in 2021 with fading memory and eyesight. But she still remembers how to knit and doesn’t need to see in order to do it. Thank you 🩷
Oh to be well organised! I have a huge lidded sewing box made by my Grandpa, 2 wooden cantilever work boxes and 5 work baskets, some inherited and some charity shop finds, as well as a charming German circular lidded box covered in red fabric with a tiny pattern. All have a variety of unrelated things inside; one day I’ll have a Handsewing one, a Mending one, a Cross-stitch one, an Embroidery one and a Dressmaking one, one for threads one for notions and one for scissors. Until then I’ll just have to keep looking in them all until I find that for which I’m searching!
My great-grandfather was a tailor, quite successful, three shops dotted around Lincolnshire. I have some of his wax, chalk, a bodkin or two, some thimbles & a tiny little olive green silk pincushion filled with emery. Very precious.
I can relate to putting pencils and other inappropriate items through collar points/corners, sigh. I have a lovely collection of old tins for my sewing accoutrements. We had a lovely Haberdashery in Totnes years ago, but the owners retired without being able to sell the business. So sad.
Ah.... this is brilliant. Love the peak inside all these lovely sewing baskets and boxes. And now I need to go to Lisbon....
Love this, please do knitting bags next!?
So much pleasure to be had from reading this, thank you!
I loved this so much!
What a lovely piece... thank you! The tablecloth from Carlyle's house is just beautiful as are the Lucie Rie buttons. And what a great store front in Lisbon. So many inspiring things to look at.
This is lovely. When I was a child there were two haberdashery stores within walking distance of our home, both run by sisters, but the larger one also had a brother who worked in the front of the store where more sturdy items were sold. There were haberdashery departments in stores in the city centre but these small local shops were like little jewel boxes Nowadays there are only two large chain stores in the city that have what seems a limited supply of items. At home, for threads, I use my mother's old wooden sewing box that concertinas out each side. Each of my grandchildren has spent happy hours rearranging the contents by colour or their own design, and doing the same with buttons stored in five Bonne Maman jars.