Simple Gifts : Sweet Little Pin Cushion

 Blue Rooster Pin Cushion

It's no secret that my favorite place to shop is thrift stores like Goodwill and St Vincent de Paul's.  This week, I found this lovely little Blue Rooster coffee cup. It was too small to put into service for tea, so I knew it wouldn't land in the kitchen.  But I thought I cold make a little pin cushion out of it.  That way he'd become a handy companion in my sewing room.

I've done this before with the tea cups from Gramma Pickles' china set that she saved and saved and never used ...  The tea cups were pretty, but too small to actually use.  Still I wanted to keep them because it was part of the family history.  That time, I made a little tea cup pin cushion for all the sewers in my family.  ;-)

No such family link to this little Blue Rooster.

In the fabric / crafts section at StV that same day, I found this suitable half-yard of fabric for $1.  Perfect for a pic cushion!  The pins won't get lost in the fabric.

How to do it:

 

1) Use a plate to cut a circle out of the fabric.  This plate is about 8 inches in diameter.

2) Use dental floss or other strong thread to hand stitch a wide line along the edge of the circle.  Let your stitched overlap a bit at the start and finish.

You can also stitch on a machine.  Use strong thread and a looonngg stitch length.

3) Gather up the stitches, so you have a fabric ball.

Fill that ball with stuffing of your choice.  I have plenty of alpaca and other wool fiber on hand, so that's what I used.

Tie off the stitching so your puff ball stays securely tied.

 

4) Invert the puff ball and stuff it into the Blue Rooster cup.

My cup was a little deep, so added some fabric craps at the bottom of the cup to take up space, and push the puff ball to where it needed to be just above the rim of the cup.

Voi la!

While I was at it ...

I bought this little pottery / ceramic pin cushion at the Wisconsin Sheep & Wool Festival last fall.  The potter [Megan Zeiner at Headwaters Pottery] had stuffed it with alpaca fiber.  I loved the blue she used ...   I think she meant for the fiber to be felted, but they were selling well and she didn't have time to condition the fiber, so it was a little fly-away ...    I haven't really used it for that reason -- but it looks nice!

So today, I cut a 2nd circle of fabric to contain the fly-away alpaca fiber from this lovely blue pic cushion.    Problem solved!

Tea Cup Pin Cushion

This is Gramma Pickles' (Violet Smitmajer) wedding china, the china she received as a gift more than 60 years ago at her wedding. Grappa was so frugal that he never ever allowed her to take it out of the box and actually use it. Gramma gave me the china when she moved out of the old homestead a few years ago. That year we hosted Thanksgiving at our house, and I made sure Gramma got the first plate of food on her own China. She finally got to eat off of it. ;-)

This weekend, I bought a "new" old set of china at a neighborhood rummage sale. The "new" china pattern is more to my liking and personality. I decided I could give up Gramma's China, even though it's a family heirloom.

I decided I could keep a few of the teacups from Gramma's set if I turned them into pin cushions for the sewers in the family, Gramma included. These were so easy to make! I used one of the plates to make the circle. It turns out to be just the right size proportionately! Here's the basic tutorial I used. You can get a lot more complicate with extra buttons and ribbons, but I kept it simple.

Felted Geode Pin Cushion

At Conversations-in-Cloth this month, our resident felter and fiber artist taught us how to make felted geodes that can be used for pin cushions. She brought a great pile of hand-dyed wool that was heaped up on the center table. We picked the colores we liked, layers them, and "worked" it into a ball.


This is my geode put back together. Just like real geodes, it has kind of a humble shell. The most exciting part of the evening was when we cut them open at the end of the night to reveal the patterns and colors within. Ooohh! Ahhh!