Poll: TSWL's Finest of May 2012 Week 1 Elimination round

My Sewing Machine Needle Pincushion was featured this week on To Sew With Love and is in week 2 elimination round for the finest of May 2012. If you have time please vote for my pincushion!

Poll: TSWL's Finest of May 2012 Week 1 Elimination round

San Antonio

I am in San Antonio this week visiting my Dad and he has become quite the creative decorator! I thought I should share a few examples. The pictures were taken with my phone so the quality isn't the greatest,. The photo above he placed an old authentic lariet on the wall with family photos.

And of course a picture of "The Duke". resides in the living room.

 It has been raining down here the past few days, but today the sun is out and it is warm! Have a great weekend and Happy Mothers Day to all the mom's!

Saturday

 On the first Saturday of each month, Home Depot has free kids workshops and Jon has been taking Peewee there for a few years now. Today he made a planter. He is the kid who takes the blue paint brush and dips it into the yellow paint and so on by the time they leave all the paint colors are not the original color.  I am sure when they see him coming they want to hide all the paint! 

Then we went to Sr Harris Fabric Outlet.  This was my first time here and I was completely overwhelmed by all the fabric. There were aisles and aisles of all different kinds of fabric.  I thought my brain was going to short circuit!  The problem was I know what I want, but today I was not ready to spend hours looking for it.  I really prefer the small fabric shops.  We did buy some wool to make beds for the dogs. Hopefully they don't chew these to pieces!

Tutorial: Sewing Machine Needle Pincushion

When I first started sewing I never paid any attention to the needle that was in my machine.  I used the same needle on everything until it broke.  The needle is the most inexpensive part of your machine but it is the most crucial for getting good results.  Your needle should be changed every 4-6 hours of sewing.  When I haven't used a certain needle for that amount of time I put in a pin cushion similar to the one above.

Just recently I bought Lesley Riley's Tap Transfer Artist Paper from Amazon and I thought this would be a fun project to try it on.

Materials:

4" x 10" piece of wool felt - for tomato

3" x 3" piece of wool felt - for cap

20" of baby rick rack

Fabri-tak Glue

1 sheet of TAP (Transfer Artist Paper)

Cotton or Poly Fill, Excelsior

Perle Cotton

Needle Description Template (click on to open link)

Button (optional)

Print in landscape and actual size Needle Description Template or your own template onto TAP.  It is always a good idea to test print on paper before printing on TAP to make sure it is printing correctly.  If you are using your own template make sure you print in mirror image.  Trim the printed TAP to 10" long and around 1/4" above and below the wording.

Place your TAP in the center of your piece of wool felt.  Apply the TAP to the wool felt according to the directions that come with the TAP.

Using Fabri-tak glue your baby rick rack onto the wool felt a little above and below the descriptions. Let dry.

Fold right sides together.

Sew the ends together using 1/4" seam allowance.

Sew a running stitch along the bottom of the cushion, pull thread to cinch together and make couple of back stitches to secure it. Turn the cushion right side out and fill using your choice of fill.  I used poly fill with excelsior in the middle to give it some weight.

Sew a running stitch along the top of the cushion,  pull thread to cinch and tack it together with a couple of stitches then knot.

Thread the perle cotton onto a large embroidery needle. Start in the center of the bottom and come up through the top center, then wrap around the cushion using the perle cotton to divide the needle descriptions and repeat until you have eight divided sections. I went under the rick rack by gently loosening the glue where my needle would go through.

Cut out a cap.  Attach using the same thread to go through the center of the cap.  Attach a button and go back down the center with your perle cotton coming out the bottom and secure.

I added a little personal touch by sewing a blanket stitch on the edge of the cap and I made a beaded flower that my button would set into.