Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Tutorial: Salad Bowl Pincushion


By popular demand (well, two or three of you), here's my first tutorial. I started off with a straight-sided wooden salad bowl, but with some creative tweaking and glue, you could use other shapes as well.

1. Sew a couple layers of tightly woven fabric into a circle that will fit inside the bottom of the bowl. I used the bowl as a template and did two lines of stitching. Leave a small opening and fill with sand. Glue the opening closed.


2. Cut 2 circles of very thick felt, using the bowl as a template. I had some industrial felt- the thick stuff used to line winter boots. My circles were too big to begin with, so I kept trimming until they would fit snugly into the top of the bowl.



3. Using your felt circles as a template, cut 2 circles of thin quilt batting about a 1/2" to 3/4" bigger all around than the felt (eyeball it), then cut a circle of your top fabric 1/2" bigger than the batting. On one pincushion I made, I stitched the batting around the edge to attach it to the top fabric, and on the other one I didn't bother. Either way worked OK.


Assembly:

1. Put in your sandbag into the bottom of the bowl. Give it a shake to even out the layer of sand.


2. Fit your 2 felt circles into the bowl on top of the sandbag.


3. Position your layered batting and fabric on top of the felt.


4. Using a wooden craft stick (popsicle stick), tuck the fabric/batting around the sides of the felt.



Voila!! Finished pincushion! And since nothing is glued in, you can change out the fabric when it starts looking tired. Yay!

8 comments:

meg said...

fantastic! thank you.
where did you get the industrial felt?!

Marnie said...

dude, congrats on your first tutorial. now, go and change your formatting so I can link to actually posts! That way I can email people (like, say, whip-up :-) and tell them about it!!!!

Johanna Masko said...

Meg: I got the industrial felt a place that makes it. I walked in and it smelled like wet warm wool. It was an off-cut scrap they had and it was pretty cheap. I originally bought it to make a slipper project from Threads magazine several years ago, but never made them. The place is called Brand Felt of Canada in Mississauga, Ontario. Their website is:
www.brandfelt.com

phone #: 905 279 6680

There is a heading in the Yellow Pages for "FELT & FELT PRODUCTS" and I found them there. Who knew?

Jen said...

Great tutorial. Where did you find the small straight sided wooden bowls?

Johanna Masko said...

I found the bowls at a garage sale and also some at Value Village. Check the Housewares aisle- lots of old wooden kitcheny things there. (Probably next to an orange fondue pot.)

Michele said...

That is awesome!

Anonymous said...

Awesome!!

Anonymous said...

Interesting to know.