Mushroom For Needles & Pins * Land & Berge Magazine

Here is a lovely project idea I saw in one of my old copies of the Austrian Land & Berge magazine.

Find some nice spotted fabric and create a mushroom or toadstool pincushion for yourself or for a friend. You could even embroider the mushroom - an Ackworth School medallion would look really pretty.

Just decide how large you wish your mushroom to be and cut two cirles of cloth, adding a seam allowance around both.

Seam the circles wrong sides together leaving a gap so you can turn and fill this mushroom top. Next snip the edges to ease turning, then turn and finger press around the seam. Gently fill with some nice soft filling until the mushroom top looks exactly the way you want it. Then ladder stitch together to close the gap.

Next make the stem of the mushroom by cutting out two matching shapes and seaming them and filling as you did the top.

Stitch the stem to the mushroom top, dot with nice large headed pins and maybe add a narrow ribbon if you like - and there you are. If you would like your mushroom to have a base like the ones at the top of the post, simply drill a hole through a section of branch. Stitch a long thread through the base of the mushroom that you can use to pull the mushroom stem through the hole in the wooden base. Apply glue round the base of the mushroom and use the thread to pull the mushroom tight on the base so that the glue is in contact with the wood. Support until the glue dries. Then you can remove the thread and decorate the base with moss or heather.