pin pals...

Another VERY exciting round of the Scrappy Pincushion Swap is coming to a close. All of the wonderful swaps over on flickr make me a little nervous - the standards are pretty high, and of course, you don't want to disappoint your partner. From the looks of my partners mosaic, (s)he is into color wheels, modern designers, linen, stars... which leaves loads of possibilities! I chose to run with a sort-of homage to a Dresden plate. Some lovely 100% wool bits are top stitched onto a natural colored cotton linen. [many of the wools are hand dyed, which I love!]

Originally I had planned to put the cushion inside of a zinc lid, but it just didn't look right. Instead I hand sewed a wool circle on the bottom to cover the stuffing opening and to give it a nice flat bottom. It was difficult to package it up and send it off, I really like how it turned out and wouldn't mind having it sit next to my sewing machine :) All there is to do now is hope that my partner likes it as much as I do!

Enough about the pincushion I made, on to the AMAZING one I received! A current obsession is anything and everything aquatic, and my partner did not disappoint. This little octopus is practically perfect in every way. [a bit o' Mary Poppins there]

Adrienne really outdid herself on this one, she used wool felt and stuffed him with cleaned and carded wool from local sheep. The tutorial for him is over at futuregirl.com I don't know that I can stand to stab him with pins, but he will make a lovely addition to my crafty space!

I continue to work on my QAL blocks, though life has certainly picked up the pace and slowed down my progress. Here is to hoping that there will be more sewing and crafting time in the near future!