A Pocketful of Flowers by Noriko Livingstone

It’s a great trick isn’t it?

You know the one, where a magician pulls out a bouquet of flowers from up their sleeve.

If it was a real bouquet we’d all be wondering how on earth the stems remain intact and all the petals stay attached!

It reminds us of when you reach into your pocket and find a little ‘gift’ from your previous outing. You slide your hand in and unexpectedly find a chocolate wrapper, scrunched up movie ticket, gum or something of the sort, all of it in terrible condition.

There is no way something as beautiful as flowers can survive being hidden up a sleeve or squashed into a pocket.

Well thankfully Japanese designer Noriko Livingstone has redeemed our pocket experience by taking a leaf from the magician’s playbook and created a stunning piece called A Pocketful of Flowers from The Handpicked Collection 7.

Stitched onto dusky pink cotton, this drawstring pouch is a small world of pastel blooms: sprays of roses, delicate violets and a border of cheerful daisies, all worked in soft, muted tones.

It’s the kind of piece where the details only reveal themselves the closer you look, with rows of decorative stitching dividing each cluster of flowers like garden beds along a path.

Roses take pride of place, their petals built up in long and short stitch, shaded from a warm antique mauve into a pale shell pink at the base, giving them a soft, almost watercolour depth.

Each one is finished with a cluster of French knots at the centre, a tiny detail that makes all the difference up close.

The violets above them are stitched in two shades, blue and antique violet, each with its own little fan of satin stitch petals, while the daisies along the lower border keep things simple and cheerful with alternating cream and stone tones.

Then comes the real sleight of hand: a rich, beaded fringe cascading from the base of the pouch, in mauve, gold and crystal tones that echo the embroidered palette above.

This fringe adds its own special layer of magic by giving the piece dynamic movement and shimmer, exactly the kind of unexpected flourish any magician would be proud of.

The pouch closes with a dark antique mauve twisted cord, hand-made using the same thread as the embroidery and the pouch is fully lined in pale pink.

Worked throughout in three strands of stranded cotton, it's a project that rewards patience with something genuinely wearable measuring 34.5cm x 18cm wide (14" x 7") including the fringe.

If you love this design as much as we do there are two things you can do next:

1/. Purchase a Ready-to-Stitch kit HERE and re-create one for yourself.

2/. Check out more of Noriko’s stunning work by visiting her website HERE or follow her on Instagram HERE.