100th post tutorial!

Yay, its my 100th post! To celebrate, I'm putting up a tutorial on a cute flower pincushion; there are a bunch of awesome tutorials on bottlecap/walnut pincushions, but I wanted mine to be a little snazzier, so I made it into a flower! I also added a magnet so that my pincushion could stick where I wanted it to (but on the computerized sewing machine!). They literally take 5 minutes, and would make awesome gifts or party crafts. Plus, you upcylce the bottle caps, and you use up any scrap fabric or felt you might have. Anyway, here is my flower version of the bottlecap pincushion!

You will need:

• felt pieces
• a fabric scrap (approximately 3.25" by 3.25", or 8.25 cm by 8.25 cm)
• a bottlecap (I used a cap that measured 1.25" or 2.5 cm in diameter; mine came from a soda bottle)
• a small ball of polyfil
• needle and thread
• scissors (ruler and pen are optional)
• glue gun
• small magnet

Step 1: Make yourself a template for the petals. Mine were approximately 2" or 5 cm tall. The template can be out of paper or felt, but you want to make sure all your petals are the same size.


Step 2. Cut your felt into 5 petals (or more or less, depending on how many petals you want your flower to have). Sometimes it helps to accordion or roll fold the felt and cut all the petals at once, fixing them individually afterwards.

Step 3: Once you have your petals ready, you can cut your fabric! Cut out a circle with a 3-3.25" diameter (approx 7.5 cm). To make it easier, you can use a fabric marker to mark where you're going to cut. It doesn't have to perfect.

Step 4: Hand sew all the way around the circle leaving a 1/4" (5 mm) from the edge. Pull tight on the needle and thread (gather) so that a little cup appears. Make sure the printed part of the fabric is on the outside of the cup (as in bottom picture).

Step 5: Fill the cup with as much polyfil as you can and knot the thread as tightly as you can... try to leave as small a hole for the polyfil to escape from as possible. Sometimes it helps if you go over your stitches again (while they're pulled tight) just to reinforce the sewing.

Step 6: Now you are ready to assemble your flower. Warm up your glue gun!

Step 7: Glue the petals into the inner part of the bottlecap, spacing them as evenly as possible. Remember, quite a bit of the bottom part of the petal will not show as it will be covered by the fabric pom button you made. I know, my glue gun is gross; but it works!

Step 8: Once the petals are glued in, place a large amount of glue in the bottom of the bottlecap and put the magnet in it... be careful, the bottom of the bottlecap will be hot!

Step 9: Place a ring of glue (fairly thickly) around the upper edge of the inside of the bottlecap; you will be applying glue onto the petals but that's okay, it will be covered by the fabric pom button. Actually, the more glue here, the better.

Step 10: Place the fabric pom button into the bottlecap, carefully making sure none of the edges from the part you sewed up are sticking out. Push and hold the button down for a little bit; this will give the hot glue a chance to dry a little.

Step 11: Clean up the petals by trimming off any rough edges.

Step 12:Although this is optional, you can cut a strip of felt that matches the width and height of the outside of the bottlecap to for a stem; just use glue to secure it to the bottlecap, under the petals.

Step 12: Enjoy your new pincushion!