Do you play bridge? I like to play poker and pinochle but I must confess that bridge completely mystifies me. My stepmother, Shirley, is a champion bridge player. She qualifies as a Ruby Life Master in the American Contract Bridge League’s masterpoint ranking system, so she must be pretty good. She’s actually gone on cruises where she taught bridge and had all her expenses paid. Sweet!

So what’s an avid bridge player to do when she has arthritis in her hands and finds it difficult to hold a full bridge hand of 13 cards? If she has a stepdaughter who likes to sew, she asks her to make a card holder. And that’s exactly what I did for Shirley. This is what it looks like:

The cardholder measures approximately 14″ x 8″. The bottom is divided into two sections, with each section easily holding two suits.

The top of the card holder is divided into four sections, each of which contains some evenly divided #12 shot to weight the holder at the top.

On the back of the card holder, at the top, I stitched a length of anti-skid grip-cloth fabric (the kind used on the bottom of children’s pajama feet) to keep the holder from slipping on the table top:

When Shirley sits at the table to play her bridge hand, this is what it looks like:

Shirley’s cards are out of sight of the players on either side of her but easy for her to see and pull out to play.

I didn’t just dream up this design. A friend of Shirley’s had made a similar one for her but it didn’t have the gripper fabric on the back and was made of just one layer of fabric. I used two layers, interfacing one layer for additional stability, and made a couple of other small changes at Shirley’s request.

I’m very pleased with how it turned out, and my stepmom is delighted. As my sister Diane would say, “elegantly simple and simply elegant!”