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! 

 

Free Be The Sunshine Cross Stitch Pattern and a hoop finish tutorial.

 

Hi everyone, it is currently above 30c in France at the moment, pretty hot so we are indoors with the shutters closed!

In this post I show how to finish a cross stitch into a hoop and give you my latest free cross stitch pattern that is available as a pdf download.

I also show some photos of my latest Autumn designs that I have finished into a hoop and a small pillow.

Free pattern 

If the sun is not shining outside (or in your heart at the moment) then here is a free cross stitch pattern for you to stitch. I used DMC thread and backstitched in metallic gold thread.

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To download the pattern: 

Click on the image of the pattern below and save to your computer or screenshot on ipad. If you would like a pdf copy of the pattern you can contact me in the contact form on my blog, but please leave me your email address in the message or I will not be able to reply.

Your email will only be used to respond to your message.  

Stitching update.

I have been stitching quite a lot recently because the weather has been so hot and I had no energy to do anything else. I managed to get some finishing done on some of my projects. 

Here is the June Calendar cat finished.

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Autumn stitching

I finished a couple of Autumn designs, one into a hoop and the other into this small pillow.

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Here is the reverse side of the pillow. I attached the Made with Love label using a pretty blanket stitch.

The pattern is available in my Etsy store here

The printable project planner, cards and floss tags are also available with a 20% discount for readers of my blog. 

Finishing tips

If you decide to finish your design into a hoop, just iron some interfacing onto the back of your stitched piece, place it into a hoop and gather the fabric around the edge on the reverse side. 

Use strong thread to gather around the edge 

Then stitch across the hoop pulling but not too tight, finish off into the fabric with a few stitches.

Take the top hoop and draw a line inside the circle onto a piece of felt and then cut out. This will be the perfect size to attach to the back of the hoop using a blanket stitch. 

I used DMC thread to finish the back

Use tiny stitches to hide them and finish into the felt. 

I hope you live the hoop finish as much as I do!

Until next time, Happy Stitching!

Sew Pretty Mattress Pincushion and another project

Hi everyone, remember the free pattern I posted here on my blog a couple of weeks ago, well here is the design finished into a mattress pincushion, I decided to change the design slightly by adding more flowers, you can download both versions of the pattern here from my blog.


Stitching news 

The mattress pincushion was stitched on 28 count Permin antique white linen, it is quite a stiff fabric which ensures such a crisp looking finish to the edges of a mattress pincushion, it is probably the best fabric I have used for this type of finishing. 

Edited: Link to my mattress pincushion tutorial. It is not showing this actual pin cushion but it shows the same process for each one.

I have made a Needlebook to match, you can see it in this post here.

The pattern for the Needlebook is available on this page here…

The pattern for the Mattress Pin Cushion is available here on this page

Stitch for Syria

Have you seen the Stitch for Syria Campaign that is running at the moment?  
It is a campaign designed to help the women of Syria learn embroidery, stitchers volunteer to stitch a particular design, the pattern is sent once you sign up for the project, you then send your completed squares and they will be made up into a special piece of artwork.

The square on the top right was stitched using silk thread, sorry I don't have the colour it was  just a random piece of thread I had left over, the other two squares are stitched using dmc variegated thread, I particularly liked the one at the front.

Variegated thread 1345 (front square) appears not to be available anymore unless they changed the colour.

Until next time ......

Happy stitching!