Gingerbread House Sewing Box

This cute gingerbread house is really enchanting and unfolds to reveal a sewing box, with a little compartment for threads and a felt area for pins and needles. The roof is padded and not only is it decorative, but it doubles up as a pincushion as well! When not in use, place this house on your mantelpiece and simply admire.

Essentials

Fabric, printed: brown; red, 35cm x 60cm of each
Wadding, lightweight, 35cm x 60cm
Cardboard, 35cm x 60cm
Felt: red; pink, scraps of each
Ric rac: white, 1cm wide, 1m; white, 5mm wide, 1.5m; blue, 5mm wide, scraps; green, 5mm wide, scraps Braid, flower, 1m
Ribbon, fuchsia, 2m
Buttons, small, 14
Sequins, red
Beads, seed

Dimensions List

15cm square

Stitch a sewing box

Download the template. Print out, transfer the shapes onto cardboard, then cut them out. For the gable ends and sides of the house, carefully score along the central rectangle shape, taking care not to cut right through the cardboard. For the roof, cut a 12cm x 29cm rectangle from card and score down the centre.
To make the roof, place the template over brown fabric, wrong side up, and draw around it using a pencil. Using a pen and ruler, add 1.5cm to the overall size of the fabric, then cut out. Press a 1.5cm hem all the way around the fabric, taking care not to fold the material beyond the drawn pen line. Tack into place and cut out. Repeat the process with red fabric.
Place the cardboard roof top on wadding, draw around it, then cut the shape out. Use double-sided tape on the back and front of the cardboard. Stick the wadding to the top of the card. Cut the red fabric down the centre and remove the tacking stitches, then stick to the underside of the roof, smoothing out any wrinkles.
Machine stitch 5mm wide white ric rac in a criss-cross pattern across the brown fabric. Decorate with seed beads, sequins and buttons. Place it over the wadding and pin to the red fabric, matching up the edges precisely as you do so. Sew together using neat whip stitches in matching thread. Measure 5cm up from each corner and sew on 10cm lengths of fuchsia ribbon. Hand sew 1cm wide white ric rac around the edge of the roof to hide stitching.
Draw around the gable ends and sides of the gingerbread house onto wadding, red and brown fabric. Add an extra 1.5cm to the fabrics as before. Cut strips of flower braid and blue ric rac, then machine stitch to the brown sides of the house. Sew flower braid and green ric rac to one of the gable ends. Cut a door from pink felt and machine zig zag stitch into place. Decorate the gable ends with buttons, felt windows and embroidery stitches.
Top stitch around the red rectangle in the centre of the house. Cut a strip of red fabric measuring 3.5cm x 17cm, fold over and press a 5mm hem all the way around. Centralise the strip of fabric in the middle of the rectangle and machine stitch into place at both ends. Divide the strip into two to create three compartments of equal size and machine stitch into place.
Using pinking shears, cut pink felt into the same shape as a gable end, but 1cm smaller all the way around. Repeat to make two. Pin and machine stitch the two longest sides to the red fabric.
Cut strips of fuchsia ribbon and hand sew (to the wrong side of the brown fabric) to the three points on each gable end and the 90? corners on both sides of the house. Glue the wadding to the card, then position the wadding side of the main house section on top of the wrong side of the brown fabric. Lay the red fabric right side up on the inside of the house.
Pin the brown and red fabrics together at one gable end and sew together using neat whip stitches. Stitch the other gable end in the same way, pulling the fabric taut as you do so. Sew one side and then the other, matching up both fabrics for a neat finish. Assemble the box by tying the ribbons together.