Pin Cushion Frenzy

Summer has begun officially and school's out so we are in the garage fixing and testing sewing machines.  We haven't been able to ship out any sewing machines for charity for two years now, so we had quite an accumulation.  We decided to start with servicing and testing those machines as we met a lady who has connections to ship them out to developing countries!  Jake serviced a good dozen machines and I tested 11 of them so far.  I decided to make some pin cushions as that's a great small project to tackle different machines that have various presser feet sizes.  So, my pin cushion jar is full again!  Here are the pin cushions I made: 

These three pin cushions were in a magazine I bought earlier this year.  I had the tops completed but finished them finally this week.  These are quite large so they hold a lot of pins.  We were given some emery shavings and I googled that for use in pin cushions.  Two of these have emery in them.  We'll see if the pins get sharper or not ☺!  It makes for a very heavy pin cushion!

Some selvage pin cushions were in order for Canada Day yesterday.

Canadian houses

I had a baggie of small scraps in these vintage florals...such happy pin cushions!

My huge glass canister is filled up again!

I might have room for a couple more ☺.

 

Pincushion fun

 About a year and a half ago, I went to the Quilt Kitchen in Exeter and succumbed to a book on making pin cushions.  You can read about that here.  It is very addictive and such fun to use up leaders/enders, selvages and bits and pieces of leftover fabrics from other projects.  Many years ago I went to a few miniature quilt classes with Kathy Wagner who blogs here. She suggested that when you finish off a quilt to file small leftovers into a basket or drawer together so that when you wish to make a mini quilt, you have a nice set of fabrics that go together nicely.  This works for pin cushions too ☺.  Every once in awhile, I grab my book and some of these fabrics and cut out a bunch of pin cushions.  Then when I need to test a sewing machine for Jake, I have something fun to make!  

In October, one of my small guilds held a 20th anniversary get together (which was way scaled down due to covid).  I had enough pin cushions in my jar to give everyone in the group a pin cushion and another friend in the group made a lovely hooked coaster for everyone. 

This photo shows the 19 pin cushions needed for everyone.
 

 

 

The jar was full!

 

 

Last night I finished five more pincushions to place into the empty jar

 

The jar is filling up again :-).

 

 

Pincushions!

Last summer I went to the Quilt Kitchen in Exeter, Ontario, Canada.  This is a wonderful store full of all kinds of inspiration!  At the counter, they had a display of cute pincushions in a large glass vase and the book, "Pin Pals" by Carrie Nelson.  I bought the book and began to make pincushions from some cut offs from making stars, etc.  I also made some with selvages.  So much fun!  Last summer I found the perfect glass canister to store my pincushions in and it even has a lid to keep the dust out!  Last night I added four more pincushions to the stash.

These triangle squares came from the cut offs of a tulip quilt I made for a friend.

I found a scrap of Dr. Suess in my scrap basket that worked perfectly for the back.

Three selvage pincushions.

The backs of the selvage pincushions.

The pincushion jar.

The back of the pincushion jar.

Selvage caddies

A few weeks ago, a friend was celebrating her birthday.  I came across these cute selvage caddies in a book (I lent the book out, so can't remember the name :-).  I dug into my special stash of Kaffe Fasset selvages and could not decide which colour I would use so I ended up making three.  I gave the blue one to my friend, and made the orange one for myself.  I decided to give the green one to my other friend whose birthday is in September.  But, I gave it to her already because by December I'll probably forget where I put it LOL.  I did sew a few dividing rows in one side of mine and stitched a row of stitching half way the middle section to stop my pair of little scissors from dropping all the way to the bottom.  The pouch on the other side holds my red clips.  It's the perfect little caddy to drape over the arm of a chair while hand stitching the binding down.

If you click on the photo to enlarge it you can see the stitched lines to hold the scissors and thread

Drapes perfectly over the arm of an IKEA chair.

Green and orange caddies.

I forgot to take a picture of the blue one so asked my friend to send me one :-)

They were a lot of fun to make.  Next time I will pay attention to make sure there are words or colour circles on the top of the pin cushion :-)

Seriously cute Pincushion

I picked up the Quilt Quick Quilts magazine #117 (Nov. 8, 2010) on a mini shop hop with two friends this week and it had this seriously cute pin cushion pattern in it. Since I'm all caught up on all my other projects (LOL), I thought I'd squeeze this little project in. I need a pincushion for my cutting table as I'm always walking back to my thread and snippet catchers at my sewing stations. I put some real sheep wool against the front of it and filled the back up with plastic pellets to give it some weight. It's almost like a bean bag! Here is the finished pincushion with blue and yellow pins in it :-).

Pin cushion without the pins:

The front cover of the Quick Quilts magazine:

Two colour ways featured in the pattern:

OK, back to my UFO's :-).

...do I dare use this for garbage? :-)

Finally dug into my basket of selvages to make something constructive out of themmy collection. I have been saving them for awhile, inspired by Karen's blog! Make sure you make a coffee before you start browsing...you can get lost in this blog LOL. Here is my overflowing selvage basket:

I cut out a foundation fabric and chose selvages that were interesting and that matched the pink and brown fabric:
Here is the finished thread catcher with a pin cushion filled with plastic pellets to anchor it to my sewing machine cabinet:

The lining has pink polka dots and hearts :-)

At least my garbage will now look pretty LOL!

This is the second one I made last week...finally took some pictures today:
Close up of the wording on the selvages:


I used selvages for the back of this one as well, but used the ones with no words on it since you don't see much of it.


My friend, Gail, was busy with her selvages yesterday and covered this sewing bench with hers! Wow, that turned out cool too. Check it out here. I have at least 8 of those benches here and some could use a new cover. I started arranging selvage strips to make a bench cover this afternoon :-).