Hanukkah starts this year on December 11th so I wanted to get a jump on the festivities by sending something fun and personal to my niece Miriam and nephew Daniel for their celebrations. I decided to make these monogramed pouches and fill them with everything they will need to play the dreidel game: a dreidel, some chocolate coins (aka gelt), and even a little printout with a copy of the rules:

Sewing these little pouches was so much fun! I used the earthy, Looseweave Linen from Globalweave as the background.  I love it's old fashioned quality plus it's a perfect base for creative embroidery since it has a firm hand and a loose weave.

For the embroidery I used Sashiko thread, a thick cotton thread made for the Japanese Sashiko embroidery technique. Since it's thicker than regular embroidery floss it shows up really well on the neutral linen background. I used our handy Reverse Alphabet as a template for the embroidery of each of the initials and then embroidered horizontal stripes of different stitches and colors on the background. Embroidering the background was my favorite part. It was so freeing to experiment with the stitches and change colors so often.

I liked making these pouches so much that I went ahead and made some for my nieces Rhiannon and Brigid as well, and they don't even celebrate Hanukkah (they do however celebrate candy!).

If you'd like to make a set of your own please visit my Embroidered Dreidel Game Pouches Project Journal. It has links to everything you'll need from the rules to the dreidels!

Happy Hanukkah!-- Molly