Mattress Pin Cushion Tutorial

Hi everyone, I have been re-uploading some of my original posts from my old tutorial blog and decided to post them on here.

This is a mattress pin cushion I made quite some time ago.

Materials required

Finished cross stitch piece

Lightweight interfacing (Pellon in America)

Sharp scissors 

Polyester fibre fill or flat quilt batting 

Embroidery thread to match your design

Needle

You can make any design into a mattress pincushion as long as you stitch an outline around your pattern and create the panels with the same amount of stitches to line up with other pieces, you will see what I mean when you look at all of the photos.

Iron lightweight interfacing onto the back of each panel piece just within the edging lines.  

Cut all panels like this

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Line up edge so that each backstitch lines up with the backstitch on the other piece 

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Like this.......

You should have exactly the same amount of back stitches on each side.

 

  Attach the next piece at the bottom, see the next picture for a close    up! 

Can you see?  As long as you have exactly the same amount of stitches to match each side then it will be easy!

When you have stitched all four sides it should now look like this.

Fold over the corners and stitch them together

There are two ways to fill your mattress, one with fibrefill, which is the way I did it or you can cut pieces of quilt batting the same size as your mattress pincushion and place them inside the mattress before attaching the bottom of the mattress. 

Using the quilt batting will give a much sharper finish  to your mattress, I have made one with quilt batting and I think it was much nicer.

Attach the bottom piece and stitch to the top section and fill with fibre fill before you close the opening.

Your mattress pincushion should now look like this.

I think there are a few hundred french knots in this!

If you would like to see more mattress pin cushions then type Mattress Pin Cushion in the search bar or here are a few links below…

Mattress Pin Cushion from an Exchange 

Red and White Alphabet Mattress Pin Cushion

Little House Needleworks Mattress Pin Cushion 

Sew Pretty Mattress Pin Cushion

Until next time, happy stitching!

Strawberries in July cross stitch finish.

 Hello everyone, I hope you are all well?

I have been doing lots of stitching this week, one of my favourite finishes is this July Calendar Cat pattern featuring Miss Mini Cat harvesting strawberries and making jam. 

Below are some photos showing the tutorial of how I completed the finishing into a fully finished object. (FFO) 

Stitched on 14 count Aida

DMC stranded cotton threads 

 Materials required to complete the project

Card or mount board measuring about 2mm thick

Interfacing for the back of the stitching, can be fusible or not.

Thread for the lacing at the back.

Polyester wadding - optional (1 or 2mm thick)

Strong glue suitable for fabrics (I used a Prit Stick for the first time and it worked really well!) Not acid free though!

This image shows the wadding. 

Lay your finished cross stitch face down and iron on the interfacing. Place wadding on top and then the mount board.  

Thread your needle with strong thread or use sewing cotton doubled over. Start stitching from the middle and work your way to the edge.

Stitch to the end and fold corners over like this…

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Fold over neatly

Make sure the front is aligned perfectly. 

Start stitching again from the middle and work towards the opposite edge.

Once the lacing is finished on one side, thread your needle with another long piece and lace the long side from top to bottom as shown below.

Finish off at the corner.

The stitched piece is now ready for mounting on other card that has been covered by fabric.

Cut the fabric about half an inch larger all around to overlap the card, glue into each corner on the back and the sides and adhere to the card.

Measure each card slightly larger than the first piece so that you can stack them like this.

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Glue each piece to the last. 

You can lay something heavy over the stack and leave to dry. Place a piece of white paper onto the top of the cross stitch to protect the stitching.

I like to stitch the Ric-Rac to the cross stitch edging rather than using glue as it is easier to line it up correctly.

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Until next time, happy stitching! 

 

Summer Pillow Tutorial

Hi everyone, Summer Pillow tutorial below.

I decided to use this pretty blue fabric instead of my original choice of bee fabric, I liked the blue as it matched the threads used in the summer letters. I attached a pretty little bee charm to finish it off, I think it turned out quite cute!

Summer pattern materials list available in this blog post. 

Pattern available here.

You will need medium weight interfacing for each piece, you can use iron on if you prefer but for this pillow I used the stitch in interfacing.

I cut the pieces the length of the design and cut the fabric 2 1/4 inches wide using about a  1/4 inch seam allowance on all seams.     

Press the seams 

All border pieces measured 2 1/4 inches wide using about a 1/4 inch seam allowance 

I chose to use lightweight interfacing for the back piece of fabric but you can use medium weight if you prefer.

Put right sides together and stitch all around the sides leaving an opening large enough for your hand to go inside. Turn pillow right way round and iron the pillow neatening the edges and pressing.

Fill pillow with polyester wadding and slip stitch opening together

It is at this point that I iron the pillow as much as possible as this really does make a difference to the finished pillow.

Place the pillow to the edge of your ironing board or a work surface, I use the steam setting to really press the seams.

If you wish to make the oblong pillow just omit the top and bottom border fabric pieces.

This oblong pillow measures  12 inches wide by 4.5 inches high

All the pillows are made using free cross stitch patterns from my blog 

Reverse sides of pillows

Don't forget if you join in the stitch along you have a chance to enter the draw for one person to win the blue bee pillow with the charm attached, together with some other charms I will put together for the winner.

Until next time, happy stitching!

September and October pillows finished.

The designs were created by Hands on Design and you could get the patterns and the linen, thread and buttons kit from The Fat Quarter Shop as a monthly subscription, however they may not be available now.

I love the September fabric the most, I happened to have both fabrics in my stash which was nice.
Below is a photo of my boo halloween design made into a cushion, you have seen it before but I thought it would be nice to show it next to the October pillow.

There is a written tutorial showing how I made the pillows into a fully finished object (FFO)you can find that on this post.

Boo halloween and October pillow

Until next time, Happy Stitching!