@Efemera I know what you mean. For years (more than half a century 'cos I was given it before we were married and it was 51st anniversary yesterday) I had a needle book with leather outside and the proper stuff for the pages, but it eventually fell to bits and over the last few months I have acquired three new needle cases, but none are as good as the original.
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The one on the left I made at craft club, it has a crazy patchwork cover and felt for the pages. OK at the moment but it won't last 50 years!
The one with black pages was also a craft club make - it's got blackwork embroidery on the outside and tha pages are from a scrap of some sort of furnishing fabric/heavy canvas found on the club sales table.
The little one with blue pages was a raffle prize, it too has very nice coloured blackwork on the outside but the pages are rubbish. I think she used linen, somewhere between hankie weight and P&Q weight. There's fraycheck all around the edges but the holes made by the needles just don't close up.
The final bit with the very big needles is the remains of the original. I'm not sure whether it's cotton or wool. I was going to suggest flannelette sheet or winceyette but I've just looked in my 'bible' and apparently winceyette was originally cotton weft with warp filling, and indeed that could be what my old one was made from.
Dunno where you would get proper cotton/wool winceyette from now!