Won't go anywhere without my pocket!

Y'know, 'cause there's that old idea that women can't cope without their handbags... No... Okay. It was a bad pun, I accept that.
So I finished my pocket last night and I'm super pleased with it. I really enjoy doing embroidery, as you'll come to see once I get some more of my past projects up on here. It's become a bit of an addiction and since I finished my last project I've been yearning for something small and simple to do. I settled on a pocket since it's something that I'd need anyway and thus the fun of designing it began.

I drew about four different designs out before settling on a final one which changed a bit again when I drew it on the actual fabric in chalk, I was really struggling to get it to a stage where it looked stylised enough to be 18th century but still involved flowers and plants I liked. In the end I got this...

The design includes apple blossom (the top corners), wheat (because I love embroidering wheat, it's so fun!) and some semi-made up unknown stylised flowers. 

 The pocket is made up of four layers of fabric, pure cotton on the outside and thick calico on the inside. Just before I started sewing I stumbled across Fashion Through History's post where she discussed her recent 18th century maid outfit, she'd made a lovely pocket for that and in her outfit rundown casually mentioned a strength layer. I sat there going 'oh of course. Tilda you idiot.' and then rushed to cut out some calico.

I used bias binding for the edges, I'm not sure how period accurate that is but it was the only way of doing them that I could think of that wouldn't look ugly. I know the stitch I used has a name, but I can't tell you that name because I've no idea what it is.

over all I think it took me about eight hours to make but I was watching stuff all that time which slows me down a lot. For me though, eight hours feels like no time at all, especially after my last project.