Tips and ideas for making your own pin cushion. Post your ideas.
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Use cut hair to make a pin cushion.
By Cindy Yasuda
Never use 100% cotton batting. The pins will not go through the cotton batting. Instead, use polyester fiber fill. Mixing the polyester fiber fill with saw dust or hair (as mentioned below) is a good idea. The saw dust and hair help keep the pins sharp and smooth.
If you use this idea, pins and needles will stay rust-free and you will be recycling X's two: Fill the toe of a clean sock to desired pin-cushion size with used coffee grounds that have been spread out to dry (on a cookie sheet in the oven is fastest). After putting a cup or so of the grounds in the sock, twist the sock to form a tight 'ball' and knot the sock. Cut off the remainder of the sock (or not). The sock is quick and easy, but you can also sew a fabric pillow-like pin cushion to fill with the rust-preventing dried grounds before hand-sewing the opening.
Because coffee is a good deoderizer, the same basic idea works well in the closet, basement, car, etc. Socks for this purpose can be more loosely filled and knotted.
Another sock and coffee idea is to partially fill and then knot a sock with dried coffee grounds. etc. (see below) to create an 'eye-pillow' that keeps all light out while also forming itself into the hollows of the eyes to provide the feel of a gentle mini-massage. This is especially nice to sooth tired eyes, for afternoon napping, or for getting to sleep in unfamiliar surroundings. I don't leave home (overnight) without it.
In addition to dried coffee, the sock can be filled with a variety of things other than dried coffee grounds depending on preference or availability. Examples to use individually or to blend for pleasant aromas include uncooked rice, popcorn, legumes, flax seeds, etc., plain or mixed with choice of herbs, dried lavender. tiny pine cones, etc. Fancy fabrics and elastic, (to keep the eye-pillow in place if trying to sleep an airplane, for example), can also be used. Still, as with the pin-cushion, the simplicity of a clean knotted sock is hard to beat...and the weight of the eye-pillow seems to keep it in place in most situations.
I took a flat, square, metal magnet, not quite the size of a deck of cards, put batting over it, sewed fabric around it both, sewed on elastic and I now have a magnetic pincushion that fits on my wrist. The magnet stops the pins from going all the way through and into my arm.
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