Reproducing a much-loved and much-used jewellery pouch.

My sister-in-law was one of those people who was always making something. For her girls. For her family. For her friends. And, at times, for herself. I have many things which she made me which I use and treasure. One is my much-loved and much-used jewellery pouch.

It has travelled with me across the Australia and the globe on numerous occasions. It has been to Turkey and the Czech Republic, London, Paris, Portugal, Spain. It's had a very busy life.

I like it because it holds all my various pieces of jewellery. I put my earrings in its little pockets. My bracelets and necklaces in its belly, then tie it up securely and we're ready to go.

It can be squashed into any little available space in my suitcase. The perfect travelling companion.

But it's worn out and in need of replacement and I had to get my head around how it was made.

After some thought, I came up with a plan and started cutting away.

I knew I wanted my new pouch to be a little bigger, so I cut my fabric into 45cm and 35 cm diameter circles. One of main fabric, brought home from France by my friend a few years ago, and one of lining for each size.

The first thing that needed to be done was a small button hole to allow my draw thread to operate. So, I folded my 45cm main fabric circle in half, ironed it to create a centre line. Then, around 5cm in from each edge of the centre line, I made a small button hole.

Then, with wrong sides together, I basted the outer edge of my two larger circles.

I set up a guideline with wash tape to stitch the channel for my draw string.

Then stitched the top line for my draw string channel.

The second stitching line for the draw string channel needs to be about 1.5 cm from the first.

I know this because I used the width of my sewing foot as a guide for the width of my channel and then had to unpick and resew because I couldn't get my cord through the channel.

Don't make this mistake.

Now I moved onto my smaller 35cm diameter circles of fabric, placed them right sides together and sewed a small seam around the edge of the circle, leaving an 8cm gap to allow me to turn the circles right side out.

I trimmed the seam like my mother taught me, clipping out small triangles of fabric so that when I turned the circles right side out, they would sit flat.

I hand stitched the 8 cm gap closed.

I folded this smaller circled in half and ironed a nice crease and repeated, so my circle had four equal tart-like slices. Then placed my smaller circle in the centre of my larger circle.

Using my iron lines as a guide, I stitched my smaller circle to my larger circle. I then stitched two further diameter lines, so my smaller circle was now divided into 8 tart-like slices.

One problem I had with my original much-loved jewellery pouch was that my earrings would disappear into the points of the slices which made them hard to retrieve. So, in my reproduction, I decided to stitch an inner circle, 8cm from the smaller circle's edge, to stop this happening.