Tricia Nguyen of Thistle Threads sent along this really fun little freebie for distribution to embroidery fanatics everywhere.

If you’re a fan of 17th century embroidery, and especially a fan of embroidered caskets, you’ll love this little gift box that you can make with just scissors and a good glue stick!

I love it – it’s so cute!

While it would probably take a good bit of time to embroider up a gorgeous stumpwork casket to use as a little gift box, you can hasten the process by using this cut-and-assemble paper casket instead.

The mini casket features some really nice pattern elements which – enlarged on your computer screen or printer – could provide you with some fun patterns for real embroidery, too!

Mini Embroidered Casket Printable Pattern

Here’s the PDF for the printable paper mini-casket:

Paper Mini Casket paper box (PDF)

The paper casket assembles to a wee three inches high. You can find the instructions for assembly here, although it’s really just a matter of cutting on the outer lines, folding on the dotted lines and gluing all the tabs.

If you use a heavy card stock, you’ll end up with a little 3-inch high, uniquely shaped box, perfect for gift giving at your holiday stitching parties. You could fill it with little needlework-related goods, a couple nice skeins or spools of embroidery thread, or even some of your favorite chocolates or holiday treats!

If you’re inclined to, you can color or paint the casket first before assembling it, or you could print the casket on colored paper. The design area is somewhat small for coloring; I’ve found that very sharp colored pencils work best. And, if you want a slightly larger box, you can always enlarge the design on a photocopier and print it on larger heavy card stock.

All kinds of possibilities for fun gift-giving!

Thanks to Tricia at Thistle Threads for this fun little treat!

Sorry about the late blog post today. This week came to a strange end: the furnace here at home died the death – bad timing, as the weather is bitter cold – and that was followed by an area-wide power outage. A new furnace is installed, the electricity seems to be back on for good, the house is finally warming up, and life can now resume as normal. But if you’ve emailed and haven’t heard from me, or you’re wondering why this article is so very late on a Friday, now you know! Happy the weekend is here – time to Catch Up! Hope yours is a warm, safe, and productive one!