Victorian pincushion on spindle stand: 3 – assembling the pincushion

I’m currently stitching this gorgeous pincushion on a wooden base from a Victoria Sampler chart booklet in my stash. I’m up to the part where I need to assemble the stitching to make the actual pincushion.

This is my completed pincushion stitching, before I started to make it into the pincushion.

To make the pincushion pad, I rolled a strip of 2 ounce wadding into a ‘cinnamon bun’ shape, and stitched a few tacking stitches over the end of the  strip to stop it from unravelling. I made a stiff card base for the pincushion, a little bit smaller than the diameter of the wooden circular base, and made a hole in the centre of the card.

Then I trimmed the fabric to within an inch of the embroidery, and made a line of running stitches round the edge, 1cm in, with strong quilting thread. I placed the wadding shape on the card, and then the embroidery on top, and pulled up the running stitched line to gather the fabric onto the dome of wadding.

Then I laced back and forth across the card circle’s base, to pull the fabric tightly to the circular shape.

Next, I used the Perle 12 mauve thread and, following the tacked lines on the circle, I pulled the thread up through the centre hole of the card, wadding and embroidery in the centre, and down over the edge of the shape, six times, to make the divisions on the pincushion, finally tying off securely underneath. Then I removed the tacking stitches.

Lastly, I stuck the pincushion to the wooden circular base, making sure it was centred.

To make the edge look neat where the pincushion joins the wooden base, I made a thick cord using lots of the Perle 12 mauve thread. Tilting the pincushion so that I could see what I was doing, I stuck the cord around the edge, a little at a time, using tacky PVA glue, tucking in the last bit to make it look like one continuous cord (I glued the very end bit first, before trimming, so that it didn’t suddenly unravel when cut!).

Ta-da!! One very successful pincushion on a spindle base!! I used vintage cotton reels from a sewing box that I bought in an antique shop to fill the spindles around the base, using shades picked from the embroidery colours I’d used.

Lovely, isn’t it? Now I need to make the strawberry emery and needlebook that go with this.

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