A small new venture on the website this week – I’ve added a set of mini kits to the Specials page. When setting up Mabel’s Fancies I decided against kits on the grounds that so many of my designs can be stitched on a variety of fabrics using a variety of threads and colours, and that chart packs give each stitcher the opportunity to pick and choose from the various suggestions, or even to go for something altogether different.

On the other hand, if you’re a beginner you might like to get a small, simple kit so that you can try and see if Hardanger is your cup of tea without having to buy all the materials.

So I got to thinking; what would my requirements for such a mini kit be?

• The design should be small, simple and relatively quick to stitch
• The instructions would have to be more detailed than for a regular chart pack, with notes on starting with a waste knot and so on
• It should include the most common stitches in Hardanger
• It must not look like a "practice piece" – it should be something that you’d want to stitch in its own right
• It would be great if the project could be turned into something useful
• It wouldn’t be practical to include scissors or a hoop, but apart from that it should contain everything needed both for stitching and for finishing
• And it must come with a decent-sized piece of fabric! None of those little scraps you sometimes get which you can’t possibly get into a hoop
• Ideally it would also appeal to experienced stitchers, for example as a "quick stitch" between larger projects

Well, one project that I’ve been using as part of my teaching fitted the bill beautifully – the needle matchbook!

I charted three versions of the design, so that the three kits cover most of the basic stitches in Hardanger: Kloster blocks; woven, wrapped and double wrapped bars; dove’s eye, square filet and spider’s web. Then I adapted the stitch descriptions to be as explicit as possible about every step in the stitching process. I worked out how much perle cotton would be needed, and what size fabric would be comfortable to work with. And finally I wrote extra instructions for turning the three designs into a bookmark – no reason why you should stitch them only once!

So if you’ve never tried Hardanger before but would like to give it a go, here’s your chance – and remember, in the unlikely event that you get stuck, I’m only an email away.