How To Make A Strawberry Pincushion - Tutorial

My sewing pins are all over the house and cannot imagine sewing without pinning. So, I decided to make a strawberry pincushion for keeping the pins in one place. The queen of excess that I am, I then decided to make one for all the rooms that I sew in – and that is more than one.

Ok, It does not compare with the real strawberries but it serves my purpose all right and keeps my pins safe, not stuck into some unfortunate person’s toes.

How to make the Strawberry shaped pincushion.

Cut out circles of diameter 7″

cut out fabric circles of diameter 7 inches

Cut the circle into half. This one half is all you need to make your fabric strawberry.

You can take white embroidery thread on a needle (I took all 6 strands – you can take 3 strands) and on the back of the fabric make long straight stitches as in the picture below

The front of the fabric will be marked like this . These forms the seeds of the strawberry.

The “seeds” you see on the outside of strawberry are actually the plant’s ovaries and are called “achenes.” Each “seed” is technically a separate fruit that has a seed inside of it, says this website

small seed stitches made on the fabric with white embroidery thread

If you have a polka dot fabric use that – easy solution.

Or make dots on the fabric with fabric paint

make small dots as strawberry seeds on fabric with fabric paint

Fold this half circle right side inside so that you get a conical shape. Sew the open sides together to form the cone that will form your strawberry body.

keep the half circle folded meeting the fabric edges

Turn your cone-shaped fabric right side out.

Fold the top of the cone to the inside (1/4 inch) Make gathering stitches with a hand sewing needle and thread in a matching color along this folded edge.

fold the bottom curved edges to the inside

Find things to fill the strawberry – you can use fabric scraps, cushion fillings, emery sand powder to fill the strawberry pincushion.

fill the strawberry with batting cotton fabric scraps etc

After filling the strawberry pull the gathering stitches and stitch the opening closed.

Tighten the basting stitches along the bottom edge

Cut out the small calyx seen on top of the strawberry from green felt. Felt is the ideal fabric for making the calyx because it does not fray. You can fold a square piece of felt twice and then cut so that you will get symmetrical petals. I did not get the symmetry right, obviously.