This little tape measure has a lot to answer for!  It sits there so innocently on my dining room table with its cute little face staring up at me looking like butter wouldn’t melt in its mouth.  But let me tell you, this tape measure is evil, pure evil.  I know that my good fairy was trying to spread happiness and show that she cared when she gave it to me but little did she know that it would wreak havoc and cause pain and suffering!  It can be so useful, helping me when I measure material or create patterns, but its like the rhyme; when she’s good, she’s very very good, but when she’s bad she’s horrid!

This project came as a result of it being horrid.  The tape measure appears when you pull the ear as you can see in the photo and on the back there is a very sensitive button that makes it recoil quickly into its case.  You only have to put it down on the table a little bit too hard and the tape flies back in.  I was having a creative afternoon making a make-up bag for my Cinderella when I put the tape down and watched the tape wriggle across the table.  I realised, too late, that the tape was caught around my box of pins and I watched the pins fly up into the air and scatter all over the floor of our kitchen diner.  I didn’t dare move, I had bare feet and I could see they were all around me. Fortunately my husband heard me swear; I don’t mean it’s fortunate he heard me swear, but that he heard me shout, you know what I mean!

They were everywhere, I dropped them about a month ago and I’m still finding them in the cracks between the floorboards!  I decided it was high time I made myself a pincushion.  I used to have a patchwork one that my gran had used years ago, but I was constantly knocking it onto the floor.  I decided something that went around my wrist so that I couldn’t lose it would be far more useful.

You will need:  A piece of material from your stash, enough elastic to go around your wrist, thread in a colour from your fabric, a piece of plastic measuring 8cm x 8cm and some wadding.

Measure the fabric as shown in the picture above.  Fold right sides together and sew as shown in the diagram below. Don’t sew right across the ends.

Sew a piece of elastic to the end of the wrist strap before turning the pin cushion the right way, I used a big safety pin to thread the material and elastic through.  Place your piece of plastic in the bottom of your pin cushion to protect your wrist, I recycled a piece of plastic from a tray that vegetables had come in – obviously I washed it first!  Start pushing in the wadding, tucking in the edges as you go and oversew the seam neatly. When you get to the middle you need to sew in the ends of the strap and the elastic.  You may need to play about here to work out how much elastic you actually need so that it can go over your hand and stay put on your arm but isn’t so tight it cuts off the circulation to your hand!  Continue to stuff in wadding and sew the seam shut.  Push your pins into your pin cushion and sit back and admire your handiwork!