Pincushions

Quilters need accessories and pincushions are something that I have a lot of. I can't seem to help myself when it comes to pincushions and now I find myself with a collection of them. I even joined the pincushion of the month at Quilt Fabric Delights and have only made two out of the seven so far. I've given away some beautiful ones and not made them for myself but here are some humble ones out of my current collection. I decided to make another one based on the pie blocks I've been making. It's also like the featured pincushion on the pincushion swap on at the moment and I've seen a published pattern similar to this.

For this I made 2 complete pinwheel blocks out of charm squares.

I cut circles out of them measuring 5 1/2" and one strip for the side, 2 1/2" x 16 3/4"

I matched the half way and quarter way points with pins, added more pins in between and sewed it with the strip on top. For items to be stuffed, I reduce my stitch length down.

I did the same with the circle on the bottom leaving a gap to turn it through and stuff it.

Add a nice vintage button through both sides in the middle and that's it.

I made two of these and stuffed this one with crushed walnut shells and it works great with the large flower pins. The other one I stuffed with toy stuffing and I wasn't keen on it for size and it ended up looking not as nice and round. A smaller size would have been better with that one. This is the reverse side of the one above.

This one is huge and has pockets around the sides.

And this is one you've seen before in photos. It's my favourite one and I use it next to the machine. It's just the right size, the pins are easy to grab and it's also reversible. This is easy too, I used diamond paper pieces and English paper pieced two stars and you can see the middle is more diamonds turned on their sides.

I'm looking forward to seeing a lot of pincushions floating around in blog land in the near future as we see the results of the swap.