Little Miss Muffet Wants a New Tuffet

I was going through some of my sewing supplies this morning with Tessie looking over my shoulder. I found some pincushions that I made from water bottle caps a couple of years ago. At the time, people were making them with elastic on the back so that you could wear them like a ring to keep your pins handy.

Tessie's eyes glazed over and she started crooning "I want that. I want that. I want that!" Actually, she was right on target. She complained that her feet didn't touch the floor in the new armchair that I made her a few days ago. One of the pincushions would solve the problem. Meanwhile, until I finish hers, she has pulled up one of mine and made herself comfortable with a cup of tea to watch. In case you want a tuffet or two, I will show you how to do it.

You can make these pincushion/tuffets in whatever size cap you can find. This one came off of a Nestles water bottle. Plastic seems to work better than metal. You will have to adjust the patterns if you want to make them bigger. It is very easy. The larger circle should be about 3 times the diameter of the cap. The bottom circle should be the diameter of the cap + a half inch extra all around for the fold up part. The edge strip needs to be of a length to fit around the cap with no overlap. I decorated the one that you see in the photo for real life, not mini. I embroidered a pretty big spider on the top and used a herringbone stitch around the edge. For mini, I would use braid instead of the herringbone stitch, although Tessie seems to like the spider.

This is basically all you need in the way of materials. Oh and you do need a cap. The one that I made was a 1" diameter cap, so the large circle is 3" and the bottom circle is 2". The strip is 3' long and 1/2" high. You also need white glue and a needle and thread to match the fabric.

On a side note, when choosing fabrics, use a lightweight cotton or silk. No synthetics please. They don't glue well.

Cut one of each of the circles out of fabric, matching or co-ordinating. Smear a light coat of glue on the strip and stick it to the fabric. Then cut a 1/4" outside the strip for turn under. Miter the corners on the strip and glue the fabric around to the back. Cut Vs out of the edge of the smaller circle. Center the cap on that circle and glue the Vs up on the sides to cover the bottom. Now gather the larger circle with a running stitch and pull the thread to gather. Before you pull it tightly, stuff it with batting. Then pull up tightly and fasten off with a few back stitches.

This is what the three pieces should look like. The next thing that you do is wrap the strip around the cap with a bit of glue on the back of the strip to hold in place. I sew the narrow ends together to make sure that it stays in place.

Next you push the puffy part down into the cap and whip stitch it to the upper edge of the strip.

At this point, you decorate it to your taste with braid, embroidery stitches or whatever your heart desires. Bet you can't make just one! I would love to see what you make.

See you tomorrow.