Weighted Pin Cushion and Scrap Bag

A friend has just got a sewing machine and completed a dress making course so for her birthday I wanted to make something to go with her new found hobby. I decided to make a weighted pin cushion with a scrap bag. It is a design that I have made once before and I love it because it is well thought out and practical, it can go on the arm of a sofa for hand sewing or next to a machine; I found the pattern for free on Sew mama sew. There is a felt patch to put your needles in to and the scrap bag can be detached. There are also divided pockets to put in scissors, seam rippers, pencils etc.

It takes three different fabrics to make but you use less than a fat quarter of each. I chose some really different Dashwood Studios fabric. My friend loves orange so I chose the 'sienna orange mushrooms' fabric with a complementary red fox and a wildwood leaves designs. I felt these complimented each other really well and if I am mixing fabrics I like to use a range of print sizes. The leaves are very busy, whilst the foxes have a larger pattern that is more spaced out and the mushrooms are a small print close together. The three fabrics also had varying amounts of colour on them with the leaves being multicoloured compared to the orange and white on the mushrooms. There was a fantastic tip in Sewn Toy Tales by Melly and Me which states that if you are matching a lot of fabric they need to have one colour in common with another piece of fabric that you are working with; she also recommends that you experiment with the size of prints.

The pattern is easy to follow with lots of useful pictures. There were two parts that I needed to get my head around - the first was how the scrap bag came together and the second was how to fold the pocket in on itself to assemble the pincushion. Overall it was straightforward. I was pleased with the result and may someday get round to making myself one!

Weighted pin cusion with scrap bag and organiser.