Rolled Felt Pincushion

**This tutorial is intended for personal use only.**

This is a quick tutorial for a simple pincushion that requires little to no sewing. It is a perfect project for those that work with children in churches, schools or girl scouts. The children can make it for themselves or as gifts. If you volunteer teaching crafting and sewing in a senior's center, making one of these for each participant along with their own pins and needles would be useful in class and will make a wonderful and appreciated keepsake.

For this project, you may use felted wool in place of felt if you'd prefer. I have also chosen to use Fabri-Tac fabric glue although a white tacky glue works just fine.


Cut a 1-inch strip of felt times any length you desire. Obviously, the longer the strip, the larger your pincushion will be. For this project, I used 56-inches which gave me about a 2-inch pincushion.


Start by rolling up one end of the strip, applying even pressure as you roll.


Mark with a pin the length of the felt that will become the outside row.


Sew (or glue) some cute buttons evenly spaced along the strip.


Place glue onto the back of the strip and glue it around the perimeter of the pincushion.


Cut a cardboard circle the size of the pincushion base.


Glue the cardboard circle to the felt.


Trim the felt close to the cardboard.


Place glue onto the cardboard and glue it to the base of the pincushion.


Completed pincushion. Simple, useful, and inexpensive to make.




An alternative: Choose a bottle cap for the base of your pincushion. I prefer to have the felt protrude 1/4-inch above the top of the bottle cap. You will need to measure the height of your bottle cap and add 1/4-inch to the width of your felt strip.

**Note that a large plastic or metal lid (from plastic bowls or wide-mouthed jars) can be used in place of a bottle cap. This would either make a large pincushion or a drink coaster. The benefit of having a drink coaster made in this fashion would be that any condensation left from drinking glasses would not seep through and damage wooden surfaces.**


Roll the felt as indicated above. Add a generous puddle of glue to the inside bottom of the bottle cap and glue the felt roll into place.


To decorate the bottle cap, glue on a strip of felt and top that with some pretty ribbon. If you happen to have a really cool bottle cap, just leave it as is.


I hope that you enjoyed this pincushion tutorial. I have been making these for almost as long as I can remember. It makes a great traveling pincushion because it is small, and if you forget it somewhere, no big deal!

Have a wonderful and creative day!

Aloha!



P.S. I apologize to those of you that have me on reader and caught my earlier post. I begin each of my postings with a series of notes and photographs and then return to refine it when I have the time. I mistakenly pressed the wrong button and posted it in it's raw form. Oopsie!