Fun Cow Creamers Transformed Into Pin Cushions

   I have a blue delft pottery cow creamer that I bought from eBay several years ago that I made into a pin cushion.  I felted a flat disk of wool yarn and inserted that into the body of the creamer.  It works well.  I even named her Blue Bell. 

    I was checking out eBay last week and found a souvenir Hershey cow creamer that I had to have.  She is smaller than Blue Bell but she is awesome.  She has a red ribbon around her neck  with a faux bell on it.  I plan to add a pink tongue to her mouth, like Blue Bell and also insert a disk of brown felted wool yarn in her body to finish the pin cushion.  Her name will be Coco.

   I wish I could have a whole herd of these.  There were some beautiful Polish pottery cow creamers available as well.  Maybe in a few years I'll add another one.

  Pictures.

A Little Featherweight Maintenance

   I read a lot of posts on the Quilting Board about vintage machines and I learned about the vintage sewing machine bed cushions from the folks that refurbish vintage machines.  

    This morning I replaced the bed cushions on the bottom of my new Singer featherweight.  Two of the cushions was flattened on one side and all of them were very dry.  I also replaced the screws because I wasn't sure what condition the old screws would be in.  The old screws are in good condition. I'll keep them in my featherweight tool box for spares.  The machine will sit better on the table and the cushions will absorb some of the vibration from the motor.  This was an easy inexpensive fix.  

    I bought the new bed cushions and screws from april1930s.com.  She specializes in vintage Singer machine parts.  

   The new bed cushions and screws are on top.

Red Wool Pin Cushions

     I do not have any red sewing accessories on the table that I keep my active sewing machine on.  It is time to add some red color to my sewing area.  I made a couple of felted wool pin cushions for myself with some wool yarn I purchased just for this project.  I love making these little wool pin cushions.  They are so much fun to make, so simple and so useful.

     This is a short written tutorial on how I made them.  I use 100% wool yarn.  I bought two skeins of KnitPicks.com's Wool of the Andes worsted yarn a couple of weeks ago.  One skein in red and another in cranberry.  This yarn is lovely to knit with.  I've made a few scarves with it, but it's really great for felting.  The bulky variety of Wool of the Andes is also fun to work with.  I was able to make two pin cushions from each of the skeins I bought.

      I wind the yarn into a flat ball.  I couldn't tell how much yarn I had used each time, so I just guessed when I thought I had used half of the skein for the first ball of each skein.  I thread the end of the yarn into a long steel needle and weave into the center of the ball several time to make a little dimple and then I weave the end in the ball of yarn to secure it.  To keep this all together while I'm felting it, I place the balls in a knee high stocking secured with a knot very close to the ball.  I can fit four or five of these small wool balls into a knee high.  You can also use a sock to the do this, but I prefer to use a knee high because I can see through the stocking and I can see if the wool is felted enough.  I wet the knee high and the wool balls thoroughly in the sink with hot water, you can also put them in with a load of wash.  Soap is supposed to help with the felting process, but I usually just rely on water and the heat from the dryer.  Then I dry them in the dryer with a couple of wet bath towels or a load of wash.  The heat and the friction help the wool to felt.  I usually run them through the dryer several times until I like the way they have felted.  In this project, the red wool felted much better than the cranberry wool.  Interesting.

My Super Cute Pincushion Ring

     I love this little thing.  I have been wanting to make one for months, but just got around to actually doing it.  I followed the tutorial here.  I made a three changes to the way I made my pin cushion ring.  I used a hammer and nail to make the holes in the cap and then I enlarged them with the tip of old scissors.  I used material instead of ribbon to cover the sides of the cap because I didn't have any pretty ribbon.  I didn't glue the material I just sewed it to the top and bottom.  And I used a hair elastic to make the ring part because I didn't have any thin elastic.  The hair tie worked great.  

   I will be making a couple more of these.  They are super cute.

Felted Wool Pin Cushions

   I made more wool pin cushions last year and I'm just getting around to giving them away on the Quilting Board.  These pin cushions are a big hit with my quilting buddies.  I posted the give away last night about 8:00 p.m. and these pin cushions are already spoken for.

    I got the idea to make these from making wool dryer balls.  The only difference is I try to wind the pin cushions flatter so they will sit and not roll around.   Here's how I make them.  I wind up 100% wool yarn (I used Wool of the Andes bulky yarn from KnitPicks.com for these) into a ball then I start to tighten the yarn and I squeeze the ball flat while I'm winding and I continue to wind until I get a ball about as big as a tennis ball or so.  I secure the end of the yarn by threading a big needle and running it through the yarn ball a few of times.  The yarn ball is put inside an old knee high stocking or you can use a tube sock (you can get about 6 balls of yarn in one knee high).  I like using a knee high because I can see how much the yarn is felting.  Make sure you knot the knee high or sock next to the yarn ball to keep it secure, this keeps it from unraveling.  I wet the whole thing or you can also put it in a load of wash, the soap is supposed to help with the felting process and I pop it into the dryer for several cycles.  It takes about 2 hours to get the yarn to felt.  The balls won't be anywhere near dry so I let them dry out for a couple of days then I remove the knee high.  The wool yarn grabs the fabric of the knee high and you have to peel it off the yarn ball, but it does come off.  Then you have a fun wool pin cushion.

 

Eight Point Civil War "Buckshot" Pin Cushion Project

    I finished it.  I filled my pin cushion with emery.  Almost 2 cups of it.  The pattern is here.  When I decided to use emery to fill it I knew I would have to make little pouches for the emery to put inside the main pieces of the pin cushion.  So I cut my white fabric squares 4 1/4" (just a 1/4" smaller than the main squares).  They worked perfectly.  The only downside to using emery is that the emery settles in the bottom of the pin cushion and the top 1/3" of each piece is kind of empty.   I was surprised at how long it took me to finish this project, but I love it, so it was worth it.

  Here is a picture of all the emery pieces.

Here are the blue pieces filled with the emery pouches.  The blue fabric is a civil war reproduction fabric I bought on line.

All assembled with a yo yo and button top.

View from above with all the octopus arms.

Time To Buy A Bathmat

     I'm going to buy a bathmat from Walmart today.  I will not be finishing the crochet bathmat I planned to make with the the 1" strips of fabric I sewed together to make fabric yarn.  I did a test crochet last night with the ball of yarn I made the other night and I hate it.  I just wanted to let you know that I will not be working on this project anymore and you won't see a picture of the little bit I crocheted last night.  It is completely U G L Y.   I wasted about a week on this sewing/crochet fail and I'm moving on to the items listed below.


1.  Recover the cardinal pillow I made last year with red plaid fabric I bought a couple of weeks ago.

2.  Cut the squares for my Civil War Buckshot pincushion  and order the emery sand.

3.  Make the 4 pillow cases with the yardage of Tanya Whelan fabric I purchased last year.

4.  Iron the muslin and trace the pattern for the hand embroidery, Never Underestimate A Woman
     With A Sewing Machine.   Then pick the colors of floss for the embroidery.

5.  Organize the box holding more projects, fabrics and supplies.

6.  Start the pink fluffy granny square afghan for my bedroom.