Materials Required:—

A tiny piece of calico, white cotton, cotton wool, scent powder or lavender flowers, several apple pips, needle and thread, and scissors.

This makes a very pretty scent bag or pincushion.

Take a small piece of calico or any cotton scrap, about three inches wide and six inches long, and fold it across the middle. Take a needle and cotton and tack it up the sides, and down again, if you cannot make small stitches, keeping both rows of stitches very close together. Now fray out the threads at the ends of your strip, and turn the bag inside out. You can fill it with lavender if you like, or stuff it with cotton wool and some powdered scent; or you can stuff it quite tight with bran instead, and make a pincushion of it. Tie the opening up tightly with strong thread, Figure 20. Now take one or two pips from an apple or an orange, to make a mouse: if it is an apple pip take a penknife and scratch out eyes and ears, as in Figure 21. If you use an orange pip you can ink in the eye and the ear. Now stitch your little mouse on to your meal sack, and it will be a very dainty little gift to put by for Christmas. You can also make pretty sets of scent bags out of bits of ribbon or silk patterns from the dressmaker's, or cut off any old scraps of thin materials you find. Make six little bags of different colors and stuff with cotton wool and scent, and tie round the neck of each the end of a piece of narrow baby ribbon; tie the first bag with a piece nine inches long, and each of the other bags should have a ribbon a little longer than the last. Then tie all the loose ends of the six ribbons together with a bow of ribbon, and you will have a charming cluster of sachets to hang in a wardrobe.