A small cloth roll or wooden box holding a seamstress’s working tools: a packet of bone and iron needles of varying sizes, from fine enough to pierce linen to robust enough for leather and sail-cloth, spools of linen thread in plain and dyed colors, a twist of silk for fine work, a brass thimble, a pair of small scissors or bronze shears, a stitching awl for leather and canvas, a cake of beeswax for dressing thread, and a pincushion stuffed with wool to keep needles close to hand. Seamstresses, tailors, sail-menders, armorers, and campaign followers keep such kits at hand for mending clothing, stitching wounds in canvas and leather, and repairing torn gear on the march.
A village kit is plain and utilitarian; a tailor’s professional kit adds graduated needles for embroidery, silken threads in a dozen dyes, and shears fine enough to cut through a single layer of velvet without crushing the pile. The tools are inexpensive to replace, but a well-used kit — the scissors honed, the thimble worn to the shape of a specific finger — is a personal thing, and a seamstress working with borrowed tools is never as quick as with her own.