If you collect handkerchiefs like my adult daughter does, you might want to make a special box for them. The craft project below is from 1906 and explains how you can make an old fashioned handkerchief box for your collection.
Handkerchief Box
Among the vast number of homemade presents there is none likely to be more useful than a dainty box to stand on one’s dressing table in which to throw handkerchiefs and veils. Such a box requires only patience and neat fingers to be turned out very quickly.
In the first place, four strips of rather substantial cardboard are cut to the size required, for the front, back, and sides of the box, as well as two squares for the bottom and lid. These are then duplicated, and the second set of pieces being cut a fraction larger than the first.
Cover the pieces of cardboard with brocaded silk – a design with a large figure placed in the center of the cover is most effective.
Cover the inner pieces of cardboard with a pretty plain silk. The silk is glued to the cardboard.
When thoroughly dry the two sets are fitted together, back to back and slipstitched to one another, so that a neatly lined box is the result.
Unless the inner strips are a little smaller than the outer ones they will not fit properly.
The lid is covered first with a padding of cotton sprinkled with ratchet powder.
Source: The Yakima herald. (North Yakima, W.T.), 05 Dec. 1906.
