Pin Cushions and More

Every Christmas I have these moments where a small gift is suddenly needed, and I have nothing on hand.  Sometimes I have a bit of time to come up with something, and sometimes I don’t.  So for the times I don’t I’ve been doing something very unusual – working ahead.  I’ve been having so much fun, and there’s so many great tutorials out there for little useful(ish) projects.

First up:  this little pincusion.  Super easy and fun.  Having never made a pincushion I was a bit stumped on what to stuff it with.  I snooped around a bit online and read a few discussions on it.

A lot of people were singing the praises of crushed walnut shells (allergy allert), but using that would negate the reasons I’m sewing this stuff to begin with.

The reasons being:
1.  I get tired just thinking of going out shopping with my little kiddos anytime, let alone when it’s uber-cold.  (remember, I live out on the prairies and am a good 45 minutes from any shopping mall.)

2.  I have so much crafting stuff floating around, I need to put it to use, rather than going searching for something exotic.

3.  I love making stuff.

So, back to stuffing.  I found out that any ideas about filling that would “sharpen” your pins is outdated, since our modern pins don’t need sharpening.  Somewhere I read that you could cut your leftover bits of batting into tiny pieces and use that.  So I did, only I used the fluffy polyester batting and it worked really well.

But one more thing I hadn’t thought of, was that your pincushion needs a bit of weight to it, so that when you go to pull out a pin, the pin cushion stays put.  Well, who’d a thunk it?

So I added some rice, which sinks to the bottom and adds the perfect weight.

There are more of these in my future.  Hopefully someone needs a new one.