Millefleur Felted Wool Coin Purse

$32.00 USD

100% New Zealand Wool
Open pasture, naturally soft, cleanly spun, and extraordinarily resilient.
Individually Hand-Sculpted
Wet-felted and needle-detailed so no two pieces are identical.
Naturally Fresh & Durable
Breathable, odor-resistant, and easy to spot clean.

Description

Flowers scattered across a plain field, with no stems and no ground beneath them.

That is a real convention with a name — millefleurs, "a thousand flowers," the way medieval tapestries strewed blooms evenly across a single-colour ground instead of planting them in a garden. It is why this reads as a pattern rather than a picture.

Each flower is built in three stages. A cut-felt blossom goes down first, then a contrasting disc for the centre, and then straight stitches radiate from that disc out across the petals — the stamens. Those stitches are structural as well as decorative: they are what pin the centre down and make the two pieces read as one flower rather than a disc sitting on a disc. A single glass bead finishes the middle.

Four green leaves carry embroidered veins, and a brown felt round sits near the top like a seed head. The rest of the open field is scattered with tiny glass seed beads, thickest where there is nothing else happening, so no part of the surface sits empty.

Sky Blue has pale leaf veins and an acid-green, teal, grey and cream set of flowers. Moss Green has dark veins and a warmer run of pink, olive, brown and oat.

Flat body with a slim gusset, a zip along the top and a charcoal felted ball for the pull. The back is left plain.

Made from New Zealand wool.

New Zealand wool, felted into a flat pouch with a slim gusset.
Cut-felt flowers, centres and leaves, applied.
Cotton floss embroidery for stamens and leaf veins.
Glass seed beads.
Metal zip with a charcoal felted wool ball pull.

Applied felt and hand embroidery on a felted ground.
Each flower is built in three stages. A cut-felt blossom is laid down first, then a contrasting disc for the centre, then straight stitches radiate from that disc out across the petals as stamens. Those stitches do real workthey pin the centre down and tie it to the petals, so the flower reads as one object instead of a disc sitting on top of another disc. Stitched only within the centre, it would lift at the edges with handling.
A single glass bead finishes each middle, caught under the last stitch.
The leaves are cut felt with veins embroidered in a contrasting thread — pale on the blue ground, dark on the green.
The loose seed beads are placed, not sprinkled. They sit thickest across the upper field where there are no flowers, which keeps the empty half of the purse from reading as unfinished and leads the eye down to the blooms.
The body is felted flat with a slim gusset so it holds a little depth, and the back is deliberately left plain — a repeat would turn a strewn field into a textile print.

Pure New Zealand pasture wool naturally repels dust and light spills thanks to its dense, organic fiber structure.

Day-to-daya soft brush lifts dust. Keep a lint roller off the front — it will catch the raised petals and can drag a seed bead loose.

In a bagthe flowers stand proud of the surface and will snag on a knit lining or a hook-and-loop fastening. Keep it in a smooth pocket where you can.

Spot cleaningblot with a barely damp cloth, working around the beads rather than over them, and dry fully open so the zip tape dries too. Never soak and never machine wash — the strong flower colours will bleed into the pale ground.

A loose beadthe beads are stitched individually, so losing one does not unravel its neighbours. Any needle and matching thread will put it back.