Little House Needleworks ABC Samplers – 2 – how to finish a pincushion with pom pom trim

This little cross stitch pincushion ‘small’ from Little House Needleworks is so cute!

I decided to do the finishing for the pincushion with mini pom pom trim that I bought from xJudesign on Etsy. It comes in several colours, so I’ve bought a metre of half a dozen shades, to give me some choice as I make all nine in this series. The shade I’ve chosen for this one is ‘Dark Cocoa’. Each pincushion needs a bit less than half a metre to complete the pincushion as a 4 1/2 inch square.

I first trimmed  the evenweave fabric to 5 1/2 inches square (from 6 inches square originally). I made an interlining template that was 4 1/2 inches square, so that when I positioned it on the front of the stitching, I could just about see through it to check if I’d centred it on the stitching. Then I pinned it in place and tacked around the edge, to mark the stitching line, then removed the interlining template.

This shows the tacked line, once I’d removed the interlining template.

I pinned the braided side of the pom pom trim exactly along the stitching line, leaving about 1/8th of an inch of braid within the tacked line, so that the pom poms wouldn’t get caught in the seam when I stitched along it.

I also made curves at the corners with the trim rather than tight 90 degree angles. I overlapped the trim by one pom pom, and then trimmed one of the overlapped ones off at the end, after I’d stitched the pincushion seam completely. It helps to make sure that the overlap of the trim will not be in the gap where you will be turning the pincushion through, or at a corner, so I made my overlap about an inch away from one corner.

Then, right sides facing, I tacked the front and back pieces of the pincushion fabrics together, leaving a two inch gap along the bottom edge for turning.

I trimmed the seam allowances so that they were off-set a bit, to cut down on bulk, and cut diagonally across the corners too.

Then I backstitched round the edge along my tacked line. I did it all by hand because I don’t really like machine stitching, and I felt I could have easily ‘run over a bobble’ with a machine!!

Then I turned the pincushion right side out, and stuffed it with polyester wadding. I stuffed it quite hard, poking the stuffing into the corners with a pencil so that the corners didn’t crinkle up later.

When stitching the opening shut, I did it in two passes, stitching each fabric piece to the braid of the pom pom trim one at a time with a slip stitch, rather than trying to stitch the two fabrics together with a stab stitch through the pom pom braid.

I only removed tacking where it showed, which was only in one or two places, as it helps strengthen the seam.

This is the completed pincushion – I’m really thrilled with this!!

This is the back – the fabric looks great with this dark brown trim.

Now that I’ve completed the first one, I’ve just got the other eight to do  🙂  They are great projects to work on in between bigger ones, as I get something finished in just a few days.

Cute, isn’t it? And I don’t even use pincushions……

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Little House Needleworks ABC Samplers – a new set of nine smalls to stitch – 1

I’m starting to make the Little House Needleworks ABC Samplers – a set of nine smalls to stitch, which will look great as a collection when they’re done.

The fabric I chose to use for these is a 32 count evenweave from 123stitch.com called Country French Mocha linen by Wichelt (part of my big stash haul from January 2019). It’s a lovely soft fabric in a warm beige – the called-for fabric for these designs. I also used the called-for threads – mainly Classic Colorworks overdyed threads, with a few DMC shades too. I bought the charts and threads from Peakside Needleworks in the UK.

These charts were the first ‘caving in’ of my New Year Resolution not to buy any more embroidery things in 2019 (it didn’t last long at all!!). I just couldn’t resist these, as I just love smalls anyway, and anything with little buildings on in particular. So, they’ve been sitting in my stash since then.

They have only a 4 x 4 inches stitched area, so they don’t take long to do – that’s my justification, anyway.

I decided to do this one first – the one featuring the letters LMN – so I sorted the threads and fabric, and then changed my mind! The tidy part of me just couldn’t start half way through the alphabet!

So, I began with the ABC one instead, and I’m now going to do them in the PROPER order!

I like to colour in black and white symbol charts with coloured pencils before I start stitching, as my brain can make more sense of colours than symbols.

I haven’t used Classic Colorworks threads before. They are nice to stitch with, but I found the gradations of shade changes a bit long and predictable (about half a metre each time), so I cut several pieces of varying lengths, and mixed them up when choosing each thread to use next, so that the gradations didn’t look so regular on my stitched piece.

I got this much stitched in about four hours:

But then I hit a snag. I really dislike stitching with white. It bores me to tears. So, having spent a while getting this far, I got really bored with it, and put it aside, avoiding continuing with it, even though by then I’d done all the white stitching. How stupid is that? Anyway, I eventually got over my stitching block, and finished it off in one long Sunday afternoon.

I decided not to stitch the outer row of crosses as a border that are shown on the chart, as I think that’s more necessary if you’re going to stitch these as one large design, in three rows of three, so that you can work out how to tile the individual houses. As I’m making mine into individual pincushions, I want them to look more like the image on the chart pack, without a border line round the edge.

Now I’ve just got to do the finishing. I’ve chosen a lovely cotton fabric for the backing, from my quilting stash, and a tiny pom pom trim for the edge.

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What I got for Christmas this year…..

In our house, so that we get what we’d really like, we tend to make use of ‘Christmas elves’, who get a note in November with a nice list of ‘possibles’ – sometimes with details of exactly where to get the actual product from, in case the elf isn’t exactly sure!

So, this year, I was delighted, but not altogether surprised, to get some really lovely things for Christmas…

This is a book that I’ve been wanting to own since it came out in the autumn – it’s ‘Willing Hands’, by Betsy Morgan. Betsy’s book has 8 projects in, all created in her really artistic style, using cross stitch and other stitches to make lovely etuis. I’ll be doing a proper book review of this one soon.

This is another book that I’ve had my eye on for a few months – this pretty ‘Embroidered Country Gardens’ book by Lorna Bateman has lots of projects in her delicate surface embroidery style, to make sewing accessories. I can never have too many sewing accessories!! I’ve got the scissor case ready to make up in my stash, but these all co-ordinate with it, so it’s really tempting to get on with it and make them all. It’s obviously a very different embroidery style from Betsy Morgan’s book, but I love the differences between the styles. I’ll be doing a review of this book soon, too.

This is something new for me – watercolour paints!! I’ve been using coloured pencils ever since Johanna Basford’s colouring books became popular a few years ago, but watercolours always seemed a bit scary. But I’ve decided that I’ll have a go, as these two brands seem really good, and the colours are just gorgeous – very tempting to try. The large palette is by a Russian company called St Petersburg. The brand is White Nights, and this set is their Fantasy Set, as it has lots of bright shades, and very few browns (I don’t like brown!). I’ve also got 12 extra colours added to the spaces that are usually left in the centre of the box, so that I can have more purples than are usually included (you can never have too many purples!).

This small tin is very special. These are 12 metallic mica paints from KJDesignByKaren on Etsy- these are really lovely colours, and I can’t wait to try them out. Many people use these for calligraphy, but I’m going to use them for details in my Johanna Basford colouring books.

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