Pink Green and Chocolate!

A while ago Colleen Babcock sent me a fat quarter of fabric that is used in one of many of the Tilda books. I love those books. If you haven’t seen them yet, you will love them. Very simple but unique and quaint dolls and many home decor ideas. Things that could fit in anywhere, just use the fabrics that coordinate with your surroundings.

  This is my most recent book in her collection, but there are many more.

This is probably my favourite.

I wanted to use the fat quarter for a doll, but the coordinating fabrics are hard to find now. I decided to make good use of it so I could see it all the time and remember who it was that sent it. It’s not available here, so it is special. I went in search of fabrics to coordinate with it and decided to make a collection of pincushions with it. This is what I came up with. The original fabric is the chocolate colour with roses.

I decided to use this pattern created by one of our Canadian designers, Margot from “The Pattern Basket” for part of the project.

After that I decided I would make some new thread catchers. I didn’t use a pattern, just looked at some pictures and made them from that. One is made as you can see using the green polka dots outside and reversed using the pink on the other.

 

I didn’t want to waste any of the fabric, so I also made a wrist pincushion, the type with magnets in it to hold the pins. I found this simple pattern online, just type in wrist pincushions in Google and I’m sure you’ll find something similar. Check the length of the fabric carefully before cutting. I had to fold over the sides a bit when I put it together. The underside is the green polka dot. I also added an inside of warm and natural to make it more comfortable on the wrist, just a bit softer.

Finally I had just a couple of small pieces left, so not to just dismiss those out of hand, I also put them to work and made these beaded scissor fobs.

The thing that started this whole redo of pincushions, was because I had originally made my others using kitty litter for the pincushion part. If you’ve ever used that to sop up an oil spill you know how well it works for that. However, you never want to get water on kitty litter, no no no…..Oh dear what a pasty mess it turns into… YUCK. I went online to find a source for emery sand because I know that works well for needles, it keeps them clean and sharp when using in pincushions.

Along the way I found out about crushed walnut shells. On a couple of forums I found, they were praising this product and the more I searched the more I found that people who use it, like it the best of all the products for pincushions. I started making phone calls to pet stores as this is used for reptile bedding. We have one Pet Smart here, but apparently they don’t carry that, it’s available in the US stores though.

I finally found a store here that carries it and promptly got my DH to pick up a bag on his way home one day…Victory. I must say it really is a nice product and thought you might like to search it out and take a look yourselves. The picture below makes the granules look bigger than they are. They are quite small but not as small as sand. I hope you can check this out and see what you think. It would work well to weight dolls down, like stump dolls and things like chairs that you would make for dolls. I think many uses could be found. And the best part, if you get water on it, it won’t turn to a yucky pasty mess.