The Cure for the Common Pincushion

You don't have to go far to see beautiful wool pincushions.

My current favorites out there in the universe include:

• Ring pincushion: this would be useful for hand piecing and hand quilting
  
  
• Flower covered: Wooly Fabulous has an incredible sense of design on her creations that include zillions of flowers.
  
  
• Gustav Klimt inspired:  like it fell out of 'The Kiss'
  
  
•  Tiny universe:  how about a couple of trees growing by the river.  If this doesn't relax you while you sew, I don't know what will.
  
  
• Asian inspired: Spincushion created some floral ones and also some that look like the three little pigs and big bad wolf!
  

 
My latest creation is a 'pin donut' from some wool felt that I picked up in Yoko Saito's Tokyo shop, Quilt Party.

Want one?  Got 20 minutes to spare?  Here we go:

A drinking class with a 3.75" diameter opening can be used to trace a circle on the wool felt. (cut 2 pieces, front and back) 

After marking the wool felt and cutting it out, I used green sashiko thread to do a running stitch in a small ~1 inch diameter in the center of the two felt pieces.

Then, create another round of running stitches about 3/4" from the outside edge of the felt circles, but while creating this, stuff the little 'moat' you created (between both sets of running stitches) with some wool felt fiber.  I have wool fiber around because I like to spin yarn, but you can get it easily online.   

Put a cute button in the center, dress it up with some glass head pins (mine are 1.75" long), and enjoy!

These would make cute gifts for quilting friends, right?