 Welcome to another slow stitching video. I know it's been five million years since I filmed one. That may be a slight exaggeration, but not much. Anyway, if you've been following my slow stitching videos, then you know I like to make pin cushions. If you're new to my channel, welcome. I am a multimedia artist. That seems to fit better than mixed media. So I knit, crochet, sew, paint, draw, journal. Like I do a lot of my art for therapy and to keep myself busy and because I love it. And so yeah, right now I already did some journaling this morning and I'm gonna be doing some drawing, but right now I really, really wanna make this pin cushion that I've been thinking about since the beginning of COVID which is a long time ago. At the time of filming this, this is January 16th, 2024. And yeah, it's been that long. So I really wanna make a mushroom pin cushion and I've been looking for a pattern online. I can't find one, so we're gonna just kind of make it up as we go along and see what happens, cause why not? So let's get started. I picked out some cotton fabrics from my stash, a cream color, a couple different cream colors for the stem of the mushroom, a tan and this one. I'll probably use this one for the underside of the cap of the mushroom and then a red dot that I happen to have. This is great for the cap of the mushroom. I pulled some washers out from my stash of stuff cause I'm gonna use these inside the base of the mushroom to weight it down and I have this scrap piece of lace and these, actually I made this little trio of crocheted berries. So we're gonna use those on the mushroom somewhere and I've got my needles and thread. Let's get started. The first thing I wanna do is cut out a base and I think I'm gonna use the plain colored cream cotton and we're gonna cut out two circles. I'm gonna take these and put them over here right now. I think for a pattern, I'm gonna just work smarter, not harder maybe? And we're gonna use a roll of tape. I'm going to grab a fabric marking pen and trace around the tape. Time for the reading glasses. So we are going to take this and I'm not gonna cut it out any further than that, at least not at the moment. I'm gonna stitch on the blue line with some thread. Gonna use a back stitch, just a simple stitch. You could do this on the machine, of course you can. I prefer to do it this way most of the time when I'm making these small things. Partly cause I just enjoy stitching it, partly because it gets a little fiddly doing it on the machine. I almost sewed it all the way closed, which you do not wanna do. You wanna do it like this and leave a little bit of an opening, big enough to fit your washers in. Hopefully now we have this, which is gonna be the base of our mushroom. I'm gonna trim a little bit of the excess off of here. You don't really need to because we're gonna hide all this on the inside of the mushroom stem, but I'm gonna just trim off a little bit. And then probably what I'll do is use it to stuff the mushroom. All right, set that aside. Now we're gonna get our other piece of off-white fabric. Hopefully it's big enough, we'll see. Okay, so we're gonna cut it into two rectangles. Try to get it semi-even. Again, using the extra little tiny bits and scraps to stuff the mushroom later. Gonna line up all of the short ends because I don't mind, what we're gonna do is gather these around the base, but also gather them a little smaller around the top. So I wanna cut it from the top. What's gonna be the bottom to the top at an angle. So there's less gathers on one end than the other so that hopefully the mushroom stem kinda goes like that, hopefully. So we have pieces that look like this. Now my piece is one is longer than the other because that's the scraps I had, but you at the very minimum wanna have enough to go around the circumference of your circle. Once you have, thought it was filming. Anyway, once you have the bottom, the side sewn and gather. Clip it to the bottom to the circle and then we're gonna sew using these stitching lines as guides so make sure when you clip the sides to the circle bottom that you overlap that and as you sew make sure you're adjusting the fabric so that you're catching all three layers. So we're gonna sew the side to the bottom and then we'll gather, we'll stuff it and gather the top and then I might see if I have another piece of this and add it to the top as we go around. I think that would be nice on there and maybe add the berry. As I sewed the sides to the base, I did gather the circle just a little bit as I was finishing it off and then I pulled out the gathering threads and then we're gonna turn it the other way around. Now we did use a fabric marker so if there's any blue showing from the marker or any color showing, you should be able to just get it wet and have it go away but also go around and see if there's any spots you need to take another stitch in. I see one right there and I only see a little bit of blue showing right there so I might just stitch that really quick. So let's do this one first. You're going through a lot of layers of fabric so if you need to, if you're having trouble pushing the needle through, I'm using my table as leverage and that is perfect. Okay, let's hide that off. Let's do that other side where the blue was showing. Now I am using a thicker thread. This is like a buttonhole twist. It's actually silk thread. It's what I had handy but you can use regular sewing thread and you can use the machine for this. I mean, there's no reason that you have to hand stitch it if you don't want to. But it's small and might be kind of fiddly on the sewing machine. Perfect. Anything else? Nope. Okay. Tie that off. Turn it right side out. Now we're going to put some stuffing in the base before we gather the top. You have polyfill but I also have a basket of fabric scraps and I'm going to use the fabric scraps. Some of them are kind of big but we'll use the little ones. Thank you. Okay, so I want to make sure I give it some shape to look like a stem of the mushroom. So I actually have a bunch of these wooden clothespins. I'm going to stuff it in the middle and push it all the way down to the bottom. Then I'm going to pull my gathering threads and pull the fabric up to the top of the clothespin where that indent right here is and then we're going to tie it off. Move the stuffing around if you need to and tie it off. That's our, the base of our mushroom stem. Now I have some lace I mentioned before. I did find a second piece of the same lace or similar lace. So I do think we're going to sew this around that. Maybe. First I want to see if I can secure. Look, it's already sliding down. I want to see if I can secure this up here to here. So it stays up. I need to use some glue. I don't usually do that with my pin cushions but I don't know. I might be able to do a stitching. Let's try that. Okay, let's get some more thread. Let's try something. I'm going to put the needle through the fabric from the inside. Maybe it's a lot of layers of fabric in here. There we go. That'll just help hide the knot a bit tight. Take a stitch, do it again. Other stitch, it's better. Kind of wondering, do I want that at the top or the bottom? Maybe the bottom. Okay, so I think what I'm going to do while I have this sewing thread up here, position this lace and catch these little peaks. Now this one is an unfinished piece of lace. It is tied off but I'm going to trim the thread and then we'll just hide it underneath. Yeah, that'll work. Okay, now let's do this one. Okay, then I'm going to push the thread up near the clothespin head and then tie it up up there because theoretically when I put the mushroom top on it, it should be hidden but I guess we'll see. Piece of thread, let's attach this to the bottom. So I'll pull it taut. Doesn't have to be tight. Kind of try to hide your knots in seams or pull them underneath if you can. Trim off the thread ends and we'll just sort of whip stitch this down. Kind of doing little small gathers as we do because this is a flat piece of lace being sewn to a round object. So gathers are a must. Just keep going and eventually it's going to look like that. Here's our mushroom base and I sewed the little circles on here and the lace down. We need a top though, because right now it just looks like an onion or a bulb of garlic. So we need to cut. And I've been debating while I've been sewing the bottom, do I want to do more gathering and pleating and do I want to do it by hand? Because I would kind of like to cut a strip of this for the underside of the mushroom cap and have it be pleated, but it would be cool. But maybe I should do the gathering by machine. Let me cut my strips and then we'll decide. I decided to sew it by machine and the iron is heating up while that's, so I can press it down flat. While that's heating up, we need to cut this part and I need to figure out how I want to do it. So that's a thing. The easiest thing would be to cut a circle bigger than with the bottom of the top of the mushroom is gonna be then gather the edges and fix it to the bottom. That would be the easiest thing to do, which means first I need to press the other part. Okay, hold on. Just gonna eyeball it and we're gonna see what happens. I did go to the machine and do a row of like stay stitches around the gathers in the center because I do think that's where I'm going to turn it right side out, which means I don't want this to pull out. So I did another row of stitches on there. So now I think we have to gather this fabric and sew it to this fabric and then turn the whole thing right side out. I hope it looks like a mushroom. Okay, so I fitted around with these clips. Now by the way, I do sew with pins, but for something like this, these clips work great. And I pin the two together. This is gonna give the shape that I want. And once we sew it down, yeah. So next, gonna sew these together. I'm gonna do it on the machine. So we'll call this a half-waste low-stitch project. I'll be back. I was gonna be kind of compulsive about going in and fixing some mistakes like these. However, I am going to do that, but I think I'm gonna do it by sewing this on around the edge of the top. How cute would that be? All right, let's go get that done. Okay, now we get to stuff it. So I have found with making pin cushions that for this part where I'm gonna stick the pins in, I can use fabric scraps, scraps, blah, blah, blah. Fabric scraps, but it is easier to stick the pins into polyfill. So that's what we'll use. Plus it's a little lighter weight and I want the base to be kind of on the heavy side. Now when we do sew this, this is gonna probably gather even more. Maybe I have to figure out how to attach it to the base. Otherwise I have to do something with that hole. Oh, I guess not. That would actually work. How cute is that? Okay, I think I did it a little more polyfill. We're gonna stuff it pretty firmly because it is a pin cushion. I've also been known to use like old pillows that are past it. I wash them and dry them. And then I use the polyfill for our stuff like this. Okay, how does that coincide? Oops, yeah, that'll be cute. All right, let's sew that down. I think that's probably enough stuffing. Let's see, yep, let's get this sewn. Almost done. Okay, I'm gonna use two strands of thread even though this is thick thread. You could do the mushroom top by hand. It was a little quicker to do it on the machine. Okay, I'm gonna start by putting the needle through the back side of the mushroom cap just on the outside of the machine stitching threads so that hopefully you can hide those. And again, it might end up being gathered just a little bit which is fine. We're gonna attach one to the other and the way that I'm doing this will hide all those raw edges inside, hopefully. Of course, if you had three hands doing this, that would probably be handy. I don't think there's any way to like pin or clip the two of these things together. And I can tell you by holding it, the base is nice and heavy, which is what we want. Pull your threads kind of taut as you're going and maybe take an extra sort of a knot stitch here and there to keep things from unraveling. You might need to go around a couple times. At the end here, I'll get my little collection of pin cushions out and show you all all the different ones I have so far. Some are store bought, some are homemade and they're all fabulous. I love them all, they make me smile. Okay, let's try to tie this in a knot. Let's go again. Now, if you feel it's not quite secure enough, you can of course go around a second time. Let's see. I do think I'm gonna take an extra stitch or two over here on this side. Okay, let's tie that. This is our mushroom. I think it's pretty secure. Okay, tie it off. Tie the thread. That's so cute. Okay, hold on. Hey, this is my pin cushion collection, most of which I've made, but not all. They're pretty cool. I like them all, but I think it's maybe a problem. Maybe, I don't know. I got a lot of things that could poke you. I don't even know if this is all my pin cushions, to be honest. I think there might be one more, a bird somewhere. Anyway, I love it. I hope this gives you some ideas of what you can do to make yourself some interesting, cute notions for your craft room, little tools for your craft room, whether it's a pin cushion or something else. Instead of just going out and buying something, not that I don't do that, but how about making yourself one? This is one of the first ones I made, and this is a little ceramic jar from our dish from the thrift store. I made a ball of fabric, stuffed it super full with polyfillet fill, and then glued it into the jar, and I use this for pins. And it works really well, I've had it for years. So anyway, yeah. I hope you enjoyed this video. Don't forget to like, share, and subscribe. If you have questions, comments, or concerns, leave them down below. If you would like to support the free content here on YouTube, I'd appreciate it. You could join my Patreon. It's only a couple bucks a month. The link is in the video description. Also, support Rubber Moon and Art Foamies stamp companies. They're little mom and pop companies. I do have designs with both. However, there's a lot of other really great artists there too. So go show them some love and support, whether you buy my designs or not. And above all, go out and have a great day. Do something nice for yourself, because you deserve it. I'm gonna enjoy my new mushroom pin cushion, and I'll see you in the next video. Bye, guys.