1960’s Hankie Box Made from Cards

 

        1960’s Hankie Box Made from Cards

I grew up in the Sixties, hence where some of my influence and ideas come from for our lovely retro, pastel, shabby chic style home.

I remember that some lovely little old ladies, friends of my Mothers, made my Sister, and I, a lovely hankie box each. I always thought mine was the prettiest. Lol. They sat on our dressing table, my Sister’s on her side on the dressing table and mine on my side. (It was more like a shorter tall boy, than a dressing table, but I loved it. It was painted white with turquoise doors to match our bed heads). I don’t remember what colour our hankie boxes where or the detail on them but I do remember a special feeling when I would look at its pretty pictures on it, and that it had just as pretty pictures on the inside. It always intrigued me as to how they got the picture on both sides and behind a protective coating. I also loved the way that the picture had been joined together. Now I know that they were held together my crocheting, but I didn’t know this back then. I also loved to look at the beautiful hankies that I had inside the box. One was given to me by my Mother and another was sent over from England from my Nana. I loved them. We didn’t have much on that dressing table as we didn’t have a lot of things back then.

When I was nearly 10 years old we shifted to England and had to sell and give away everything except for a couple of precious dolls, a teddy bear, and of course my Barbie doll. So the hankie box was gone.

Whenever we want to add something to our retro, pastel, shabby chic style home we often frequent the Mill Markets, The Vintage Markets, the Opportunity Shops/Thrift Shops/Second Hand Stores, and even at Easter and Mother’s Day there are so many pretty pastel coloured things available in the shops, just right for our unique home just to fit in that right special spot needing to be filled.

It was on one of our visits to the Vintage Market’s that I saw a very old shabby, well used, and well worn out hankie box. That brought back my memories of my beautiful hankie box. So I was inspired to make a hankie box for our bedroom. I knew straight away what cards I would use, as I had brought some from a throughout table at Spotlight many years before.

This time I would use it for all of my special bows and hair clips instead of hankies. Even though hankies aren’t as common as back in the 60’s, I do still have some very pretty lacey hankies, which I am saving for that special project.

Enough sharing about my memories, but I’m certain you also have special memories from your childhood that spark that warmth in your heart for you as well. Please feel free to share your precious memories in the comments below; I would love to read them.

Here is the template that I used for the sides of the hankie box, but there are many you can print out online and from Pinterest. I printed it out on an A4 sheet of paper. You can make it larger or smaller depending on what size you think you will need. My hankie box was much smaller from when I was a child, but this one needed to be much bigger.

 This is the template for the top and the bottom. The red lines are the sizing for the lid. But if I made another one I would leave cutting out the lid until I had the bottom part of the hankie box together to get the accurate sizing. Mine is okay but I would have preferred it just a little bigger.

The black lines are for the sizing of the bottom pieces.

I also traced out and cut another template on a transparency sheet, then used a hole punch to place all the holes in for the crocheting to go in later. 

You will need to trace out:

6 side panels from Birthday cards or card stock for the outside panels, (Just make sure your card stock is very strong if it isn’t you may need to put another sheet of card stock in between the 2 panels, to give the sides the strength that they need to stand up and hold whatever you want to store inside of you hankie box.

6 side panels from Birthday cards or card stock for the inside panels for the inside panels

12 side panels cut out from the A4 transparency sheets.

2 panels for the bottom, 1 for the outside and 1 for the inside.

2 panels for the lid, 1 for the outside and 1 for the inside.

2 transparency panels for the bottom

2 transparency panels for the lid

Once you have all panels traced out then cut them all out. 

Place all pieces together and now you are ready to crochet around all the edges bring all the piece together..

After you have finished crocheting them you just sew them all together use the same cotton you used to crochet with or at least a matching thread. 

Hope you find this helpful. If you have any questions please feel free to ask in the comments below. 

I pray that the Lord will bless you abundantly today and forever. In the name of Jesus I pray. Hallelujah and Amen.