I love quick handmade projects. And, I love participating in swaps. It seems that some of my friends over in the Quilt Club Australia Facebook group do too.

This past month, Lauren of the Ren Rad Crafts blog organised a pincushion swap. It was a fast swap with a 3 week turn-around. Yes, it was a quick one.

We all made up a pincushion board on Pinterest and once we received our secret partners, we were free to stalk their boards, blogs and get cracking on making them a pincushion, that we knew they would like.

I firstly made a preserving jar pincushion for my partner. Preserving jars are VERY hard to find here in my local area (or even in this country). I did contemplate eBay, but eventually lucked out in finding a 6 pack of jars in a local home wares store. Yay!

It would have looked better with a silver or gold lid, but when all you can find is red and white gingham inspired lid… well you run with it.

I love this cherry fabric and I hope my partner loves it too.

Other than the search, this pincushion didn’t take very long to make, so I decided that I still had time and would make her another one.

You can never have too many pincushions, now can you?

So I went back to her Pinterest board and loved this little star pincushion she had pinned. I went through my scrap tub and found colours which I knew she’d like and cut up the little bits of fabric (1 3/8” squares) and made the star block pincushion.

I really, really, REALLY love how it turned out. It almost didn’t make it into the parcel, but I was strong and posted it this morning.

How many pincushions do you have?

I can see 3, where I am sitting right now and I’m sure if I delved into the boxes which I have packed away in storage, I’d find some more.