All my experience with pincushions is for sewing.
For that, I switched to a magnetic pin dish decades ago, but
magnets wouldn't do at all for lace: you can't pin a dish
to a pillow, the delicate pins would be damaged when the
magnet grabbed them and jammed them in with the others,
brass pins need not apply, I was forced to switch to
big-headed pins in order to use the dish, and despite the
large heads I fumble a bit at getting the pins out. Getting
two or three when I wanted one is no problem with sewing
pins, but would be intolerable when making lace -- and
lacemakers are not at all impressed with being able to set
the dish on the floor and drop pins onto it from a height.
I have three pincushions made by rolling wool scraps tightly
and overcasting the end down, and one made by simply folding
a scrap of wool and pinning it to the curtain.
That last holds two doll needles and -- so that is where my
hatpin got to! It also holds other oddball needles and pins.
Two of the rolled pincushions are nailed to the wall so that
I can hang pressing cloths by stabbing T-pins through them.
The third, I didn't notice until I walked to the window to
inspect the folded pincushion. Even on a green curtain, red
isn't as conspicuous a color as people think; from here, one
has to know it's there to see it at all, and then it's only
a vague smudge. This has a single sewing machine needle
stuck in it, so I think it was intended to store spent
machine needles, but I stick those into my cone of basting
thread now. (I use spent machine needles whenever I need an
extra-thin nail and brads aren't long enough.) There is
also a stray hand-sewing needle in it -- I store hand-sewing
needles by pinning the packet to the curtain, pinning a
scrap of wool to the packet, and sticking used needles into
the wool. And there's a T-pin, but that is securing it to
the curtain.
I have a couple of pin cushions made by stuffing a scrap of
wool cloth into the hole of a spool of hand-sewing thread; I
wish I knew how I got the middle of the scrap to stick out
as a neat, hard dome. And when I use a scrap to shim a
bobbin-holder onto a spool of machine-sewing thread, I
sometimes use wool or silk and leave a corner big enough to
stick a hand needle into sticking out.
I have a fifty-year-old pincushion stuffed with my own hair.
I think I made it by overcasting two pieces of embroidered
real felt together with darning wool, but it might be H2O
flannel; it has since been slipcovered with black wool, so I
can't look. When first made, it was nearly spherical and
the cat loved to bat it around; one morning she left it
beside the bed upside down, and I stepped on it with a bare
foot. That really wakes one up!
One day after squeezing and squeezing to find a needle that
had slipped completely inside, I flattened it by stitching
through it, probably with darning wool. I don't know
whether to call it quilting or soft sculpture. This also
made it firmer.
Today it is pinned to the curtain to keep my pearl-head pins
(something like divider pins) handy. Since the pins occupy
only the upper edge of the cushion, a packet of tidy pins
and some other special pins have accumulated on the lower
half of the cushion.
--
Joy Beeson
http://wlweather.net/PAGEJOY/
west of Fort Wayne, Indiana, U.S.A.
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