Surprise! A pincushion!

How cute is that? 
This was a Christmas gift that I only got to deliver last week so it's been waiting a very long time to share. 

Way back in September I found these pins on Etsy and I had to get them for my best friend. They are stupid expensive for sewing pins but totally affordable for decoration! They aren't technically great pins anyway so decoration is the only way to go. Either way, I had to have them. When they arrived I knew that I needed to figure out a way to present them and that had to be a pin cushion. I shopped all over Etsy for days and, in the end, found one that I absolutely loved. It was over $50 so I needed to make one instead.

I found the pewter salt cellar and I was off and running with an idea.
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I thought I wanted red velvet but I didn't have any but then I found this button sun print in my stash. It was perfect.
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I cut a 7 1/2" circle from the red and from a base fabric and gathered a large wad of stuffing. It took some trial and error to get just the right size.
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Eventually I ended up with a stuffing ball that looked about right in the bowl.
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I sewed up the bottom really tight and then added the button cover and hot glued the whole thing in the bowl of the salt cellar. There's a ton of glue holding this thing together.
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I felt like it needed some sort of black trim and since the fabric is a button print it only seemed right to make the trim from black buttons. It was quite fiddly to sew these buttons together so that the edges of the buttons touched perfectly with no gaps. That was probably the hardest part of the entire evolution.
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One more stick of hot glue and I was ready to add the pins. 
My friend loved it and I'm happy to finally be able to share it. This project was so much fun to make.
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