Patchwork Pincushion Tutorial

**this is a repost of a tutorial I did for Riley Blake fabrics. I'm posting it here incase you missed it**

Hi!
My name is Melissa Mortenson and I blog over at the Polkadot Chair. I'm so excited to be sharing a tutorial for a simple pincushion with you guys today. It features one of my favorite new Riley Blake Designs fabric lines, Go Fly a Kite! I loved all of the prints so much that I could not just pick a few, so I made the pincushion double sided.

Here's what you need to make it:

8 pieces of fabric cut to 2 1/2" squares (I fussy cut mine to show off the cute illustrations)

8 2" wide by 10" strips

1 yard of rick rack

2 scraps of fabric each 8" x 8"

2 pieces of cotton batting cut to 8" x 8"

Walnut shells & stuffing

2 buttons

Long needle

Upholstery Thread

To begin:

Piece 4 of your 2 1/2" squares together in a 2x2 format. Do this for both the front and the back of the pincushion.

Then sew the 2" strips to the top and bottom of each square.  Trim even, and sew 2" strips to the sides of each square.

Press well.

Next you will want to add some quilting detail to the pincushion top and bottom pieces. Make a quilt "sandwich" with a scrap piece of fabric, a piece of batting then the quilted piece on top.

Quilt as desired, I free motion quilted some circles, but you can also do straight line quilting with a walking foot.

Trim your pieces so that your batting all layers are even.

Stitch your rick rack to the edge of one of your pieces.  Just stitch right down the middle of the rick rack.

Now lay your other piece on top, right sides together and stitch together, right on top of the stitching line you just made to attach your rick rack.  Leave a 2" opening to turn right side out.

Turn right side out.

Stuff with a combination of walnut shells and stuffing. Hand stitch opening closed.

To finish up, using upholstery thread, stitch a button to the center of each side of the pin cushion.  To do this it's easiest to first do a few stitches to "pinch" the pincushion, then add the buttons.

Royal Design Studio Stencil giveaway!

Would you like to win $50 gift certificate to Royal Design Studios??

It's the stencil I used in my dining room redo... you know the one in the post right under this one :)

Enter 4 ways (leave a separate comment for each item you do).

1- Visit Royal Design studios and tell me what stencil you'd love to use and for what project.

2- Like Royal Design Studio of Facebook

3- Follow @designamour on twitter

4- Follow them on Pinterest.

Free shipping to giveaway winner within Continental US only.

Giveaway open until Thursday May 31st at Midnight Eastern Time.

Dining Room redo using Stencils

Four years ago when we moved into this house the dining room was red.  In our house before that our dining room was red.  After 8 years I was sick of the red.

The problem with repainting it was choosing a color.   I could not bring myself to paint it beige, I thought about blue. But nothing really sat right with me. To be honest I really wanted wallpaper, but was worried that a potential buyer of our home down the road would be scared off by it.

Eight years ago when I had the first red dining room, I purchased some very "formal" dining room furniture. I'm not sure I'd do it again. Even though it's beautiful, if I started all over again I'd pick something more modern.

Also in the room already were red silk drapes and a red oriental rug (that I bought in Turkey, so it wasn't going anywhere).  When I thought of the room I could not NOT see RED walls.

Right after we moved in.

Then I went to Amsterdam, walked into the Rijks museum and saw this wall and a lightbulb when off in my brain.  - Actually my husband said "why don't we paint the dining room like this?"  *wink*

Gray... I don't know why I didn't think of gray before... it's a great neutral but it's not beige. Gray would be perfect!

I didn't have the budget to totally revamp the room, just chose instead for a few new accessories.

We've managed to collect quite a few Delft and Dutch  items over the years. My husband had some from his time in the Netherlands 20 years ago and I picked up a few on our last trip (the hello is from Queen Bee Market at SNAP).   With this in mind I decided to go for an Old European feel in our dining room. 

I picked up this mirror at a local boutique and Royal Design Studio sent me this AWESOME stencil to work with! ---  they are going to be giving one away to a lucky reader- (don't enter on this post, it's coming soon!)

The stencil was REALLY easy to do.  I was honestly surprised. I thought we'd get ourselves into some kind of hot mess and wish we'd never started this project.  But we didn't. I took 2 people to do it so we only worked at night.  It ended up taking us 3 evenings to finish our entire dining room. It was not hard. I PROMISE.

Here's a few tips I learned:

1- Paint the base coat in flat paint.  It absorbs the stencil paint rather than letting it just "slip" off the wall.  I'll admit that flat paint is not my favorite, but it worked very well for this project. The stencil came out crisp and clean almost every time.

2- Map out how you want the stencil to lay on your wall before you start.   Continue the stencil around and into corners. It will give it a more natural look. You can just bend the stencil in the corners. 

3- Use a foam roller brush.  For some reason I thought I should use a stencil brush, but no... Use a foam roller.

4- A few MUST HAVE things in my opinion to do this.  Painters tape, a laser level, chalk & a vertical level.  You can use the chalk to mark where to put your next stencil (it will just wipe off your paint later).

5- Fill up your paint roller with paint, then roll it onto a stack of paper towels to blot it.  (I bought the blue industrial paper towels at Lowes, I thought they worked better than the kitchen ones).  You want the roller to look almost dry. It takes less paint than you think.

We chose not to paint an overall pattern with the stencil, I wanted to really use that wall at the Rijks museum as inspiration.  So I just figured out how far apart to put each stencil and stuck with that around the room. If you want and overall pattern the stencil comes with guides so that you can line each one up.

And since I know you'll ask:

Paint Base Color:  Amherst Gray from Benjamin Moore

Stencil Paint: Valspar Brillant Metals in Tempered Pewter

Stencil:  Large Corsini Damask from Royal Design Studios   (did you notice, it's a tulip!?)

I must say that I'm thrilled with how the room came out.  The way the metallic paint changes colors all day is beautiful, and I think the gray looks quite elegant.

I still need to pick up a few new accessories for that cabinet top in the corner, and my placemats now look all out of place, but I'm not in a rush- I like that part of the design process. I figure I'll just collect items slowly.

I added the Fork, Knife and Spoon prints too.  I'm not sure if they are too literal.. but I like them and the gray and the warm tan tones seem to work well in the room.

I've still got quite a few projects left to do in here. Including changing out the fabric on the chairs (it's yellow and doesn't match anymore) and making some roman shades for the windows. - I just need to pick some fabric, wonder if that will take me another 4 years to decide?  I also need to refinish that little gate leg table in the photo above. It was my Grandfathers so I need to do it "right".

Around the corner is a butler's pantry. We are still working on that- painting the cabinets and such. I'm going to hang my collection of blue transfer ware plates on the wall over there.  And since the room seemed to be getting a wee bit too serious, I picked up this guy,

to add a bit of humor. I'll be sure to share that when I get it done.

Product Review: Easy Canvas Prints

Last Summer when I was visiting Salt Lake City, my sister and I decided it was time to round up all the grandkids and "secretly" take some photos for our parents.

I think wrangling the kids was harder than figuring out the exposure settings on my camera :)... We must have taken  over 200 photos...

most looked like this:

yeah... not a happy baby... and camera focused on the grass not the kids... lovely.

Spring Bloggers Quilt Festival

Amy, over at Amy's Creative Side hosts quilt festival twice per year.  I've participated a couple of times and thought I'd go ahead and share a quilt for this round.