Pincushion Tutorial......

....after my long break for the holidays. I didn't mean to be away so long but everything just piled up on me!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and that you are still enjoying the holiday season.

I thought I would show you the things that I meant to post before Christmas....like the pincushion that I made for our "Clothesline Club" Christmas party. We decided to have an exchange and bring potluck.

....here are the pics of my pincushion that I made to exchange.....

I had about 2 hours to make one, so I grabbed my container of leftover 1" strips (I save the leftovers just for small projects like this) and stitched 12 of them together. I then trimmed my strips that I had sewn together to a 6 1/2" square.

Do you remember when I showed you how I have been making cake plates from vintage finds? Well....I decided to make a tiny cake plate for this pincushion....as we know....everything looks better on a cake plate!

I chose 3 ric-racs out of my stash....a large white chenille.....

a medium brown velvet (from Riley Blake).....

and a small green.
I topstitched the ric-rac onto the 6 1/2" square with matching thread...I stitched the white ric-rac about 1 1/2" from the edge...
then added the brown ....and last..... the green.

I really like how the three different textures, colors and sizes of the ric-rac went well together.

Remember this wool /felt that I showed you on a previous post? I bought it at Material Girls while shopping with my BFF Nanette. Don't you just love the luscious colors?

I wanted to add even more texture to my pincushion...so I cut a 6 1/2" square of the light brown for the back and stitched it to the front of the pincushion with a 1/4" seam...(right sides together)
....I left an opening to turn.

I used a funnel to fill the pincushin about half full with silica sand for weight. Silica sand is used in tilework and sandblasting and probably more...I just don't know what...(other than filling pincushions of course!) You can get it at the hardware store, although I get mine from Mr. Honey. He uses it at work for sandblasting.

I cut into more of the wool/felt to make a flower and leaves for the top corner of my pincushion. It's fast and easy...no fraying of the edges of the wool/felt.

I cut 3 circles....these are approximate measurements....red-3"....brown-1 3/4"....white-1 1/4".

I then cut a flower with curved edge petals out of the red circle and a flower with squared edge petals out of the white circle.
I cut 2 leaves out of the green. I stitched veins on the leaves with 3 strands of floss....then I layered everything and stitched them together from the back. I added a blue button in the center of the white flower.

I stitched the flower and leaves to the pincuchion top...hiding my stitches behind the flower.

I stuck a few of Kassidy's heart pins into the pincushion....they look cute in there!

Then I added some ribbon and tule around the pedestal of the mini cake stand after the glue had completely cured.

It's all complete and ready to wrap up for the exchange....

I added a homemade card to wish the recipient of my pincushion a Merry Christmas.

Stay tuned tomorrow for pics of the pincushion exchange.....