TATTED EDGING PINCUSHIONS

With a love of mini 9 patches and tatting, it was easy to make these little pincushions for my guild's bazaar. Each pincushion is made from a 3" finished 9 patch, the pocket filled with sand and then a tatted edging added all around. Oh, a button added in the center. My friend Jan, who is also a quilter, uses the one I made her as a paperweight at work.

SO - guess these are multi functional!

9 patch and tatting pincushion

This is the little pincushion I made for Jan. It's made from a 3 inch (finished) 9 patch. The pincusion is filled with sand and I used embroidery floss to attach the button. The floss was taken through a button hole, through the filled pincusion to the back and then brought back to the front of the pincushion, through the other button hole and tied. I then attached a tatted edging which I'd made to fit this project.

Small pincushion

I very much enjoyed making the pincushion for the pincushion swap but I liked it so much, I was reluctant to give it away. Does that ever happen to you? So the solution was to make one for myself. I chose to use the same applique pattern and tatted edging (they went together so well). This time I chose to put a button on as the flower center. In my button collection, I was able to find one about the same shade as the flower fabric. This pincushion is a little smaller than the original one as I only had a strip of muslin that I was working with and I wanted to use it. The strip wasn't as wide as what I used first. Still, the muslin made a nice background for the applique and since I used a double thickness (on both pincushions), I think the muslin will nicely contain the fine sand that it is stuffed/filled with. So - here's MY little pincushion for you to see.

Pincushion with tatted edge

I'm in a pincushion swap with the Indiana quilters group. After looking at lots of pincushion instructions that are available with an internet search, I decided not to use any of them. Instead I chose to make an appliqued quilt block, stitch it to a backing making a little pillow and then filling it with fine sand. Having done that it seemed appropriate to add a bit of tatting so a found a little butterfly I had with my tatting threads and stitched it onto the pillow. Actually, I added the butterfly prior to making the pillow and adding the sand. Guess I'd better get this in the right order. I found some vintage thread (size 70 tatting cotton) which was a varigated cream, green and pink. This seemed the perfect color combination to frame my little pincushion so I tatted the narrow edging and stitched it to the pincushion. This stitching of the edging was done last, after everything else was completed. The pincushion is approx. 4.5" square and the sand fills it nicely when it's laying flat, particularly if one pushes a bit on the center to push the sand into the corners. Using a small funnel to put the sand in worked nicely. I was able to do it with little mess and no help. While I stitched closed the opening through which I poured the sand, I sat the pincushion in a bowl to keep it upright. I didn't want it falling over and spilling sand everywhere. The pattern for the applique can be found on the Sentimental Stitches website. It's one of the midget blocks - #87, tempting tulip. Here's the link for the pattern:

http://sentimentalstitches.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/midget-blocks-87.pdf

Now that I've completed this little pincushion, I want one for myself! Guess I'll be doing some more applique, something I'm learning to do. This little project was great practice.

For those interested, I don't know how many cups of sand I used as I didn't measure it but my husband and I weighed the finished pincushion and it was approximately 14 ounces. Most of the weight is sand so 1 pound of sand should be plenty. Wait until spring to get the sand and buy playsand. It's much cheaper than buying sand by the pound in a craft store. You'll have lots to share with a child if you buy a bag. A couple years ago, my husband and I were looking for sand to put in pincushions I was making and asked if we could have some from a broken bag that was spilling its contents. We got much more than I needed for little to no cost.