Between when I started my Silly Stitching and when I finished we had changes in my cottage patchwork group. Two people left and three joined. That meant that when I went to wrap all my pincushions I was one short. Luckily some one was away at our last meeting and I have another two weeks to get another one finished.
Because so many people had said they were going away for Easter I had to bring my deadline back two weeks. This added quite a bit of pressure to meet the new dead-line. I was going to piece all the backs of the little cushions using a pattern I had found on the web but in the end I used my 'travellers fabric' instead.
I found some white cotton lace at Spotlight to insert into the join and tea-dyed this. It has a sort of ric-rac look. Some one asked how I inserted the lace and kept it free of the seam, so here is a shortish tutorial.
Firstly I drew my circle shape using a water-soluable pen and then tacked the lace into position just inside this line. I
did not iron my lace because by leaving this till later it gives a suggestion of a gather when
it is ironed. The other thing I didn't do was cut my fabric to shape.
This shape is a circle and it is very easy to stretch the edges as they
are on the bias. By leaving this task till later that fabric retained
it's shape.
I then removed the pen marks. Sometimes these marks can return but as they are in the seam allowance this wouldn't be a problem.
I then ironed the lace to give a flat surface for the stitching.
I
put the quarter inch foot on my machine, set the length at 2.5 and
changed the bobbin thread to a pale grey colour. I then sewed slowly around
the narrow band at the bottom of the lace.
I again ironed my fabric, because when ironing the lace I had lowered the surface of the embroidery.
This is also the last chance you will have of ironing your embroidery on a thick towel and getting it to sit proud. (I had also spray starched my fabric to help keep it straight. When you pull it through to the right side you will remove a lot of the startch.)
The
next step is where that different coloured thread in the bobbin comes
into it's own. You now have a line, that you can clearly see, as your
stitching guide and you can see your tacking thread which you can now remove easily.
I then pinned my back fabric and the embroidery together with that contrasting thread on the top side. Changed the bobbin thread back to a matching colour with my top thread and set my stitch length to 3 to accomodate the extra thickness of fabric. I was able to set the side of my quarter inch foot against my contrasting stitching to stitch a line just inside this, meaning that this thread was not seen on the right side.
I left an opening to turn the fabric through only reversing my stitching at one side only. ( If I had made the opening too small I was able to easily undo the stitching on one side.)
It was at this point that I cut back my fabric to a quarter inch seam allowance and a half inch at the opening. (You can see where I decided the opening wasn't going to be big enough.)
After turning it through to the right side I ironed my piece again. This gave me a sharp seam edge at the opening and I was able to pull all the lace points away from the fabric..
I used a washed and combed wool fleece for my stuffing. This leaves your pins and needles sharp and clean but if you don't have this you can use the filling you prefer just don't over stuff your little cushions.
Next job was the wrapping. I used coloured tissue paper, half a sheet for each pin cushion and attached a tag using 50cm of curling ribbon. I put two little Easter eggs in each parcel.
You can find those free printable tags here.
Now to finish that last pin-cushion.
