Last year at the Ballaarat Quilters 20th birthday dinner, attendees received an "Everlasting Flower" pincushion kit designed by Leonie Bateman. I don't think I've shown it on the blog before, but I started stitching the appliqué design a couple of months ago, and finished it last Saturday.
The pattern said to fill the pincushion with "2-3 cups of crushed walnut shells". I already had one bag, which was 100g or half a cup. I found another half-cup bag at Gail's Patchwork in Sebastopol on Tuesday. Looking at the two bags, I was sure I wouldn't need 2 or 3 cups. One would do!
Getting the walnut shells into the pincushion would have been easy if I could have found a funnel. Here's what I tried:
The inside of the thread spool almost worked, but it was too slow, as I could only pour in a few grains at a time. The yellow Tupperware funnel was difficult to keep in place, and kept clogging up. I'm not sure why, as its hole is much larger than the ground shell pieces. I almost gave up, planning to wait until I went shopping and could buy a proper funnel. But an hour or two later I realised I had something that would do the job, a plastic thread cone!
And here's the finished item:
It was only as I was sewing it up that I remembered that I had been going to turn it into a glasses case because I didn't really need another pincushion! Too bad, it is now a finished pincushion.
2 comments:
Great ingenuity!
And a beautiful pin cushion it is!
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