Strawberries

I have been thinking strawberry this week,  firstly finishing my strawberry pincushions for a flickr Strawberry pincushion swap .  These are quick and rewarding to make and easy to add to with embroidery and trim.

I used a vintage latice style print which gave a great canvas for beading the 'seeds' and a scrap pf Sandi Henderson ginger blossom  fabric for the other and added french knots and an embroidered bee.

The leaves/storks are felt from Seamstar, I love the 1930s mint green colour.  The flowers were lace trim scraps and buttons.   A loop of ribbon and  mini ric-rac provides hanging loops for each.

 I used one of the basket blocks from 500 Quilt Blocks to make a mini lined drawstring bag (adapting Jeni's pattern) to pop them in with a few other goodies- they are winging their way to their new owner right now.

If you want to make one of your own, I used this pattern from Embroideroo as my base and then played around with the size.  I also used fusible fleece to back the fabric.  This makes for a firmer strawberry and gives a good strong base for beads, knots and embroidery.

For the french knot 'seeds', the needle passes right into the the strawberry and to the next flower for the next knot.  If you are new to French knots, there is a great tutorial at Sublime Stitching. I wrapped the embroidery thread once round the needle for these.

This is the treasure I received, a totally strawberry themed package from Susi (daveandsusi on flickr)

What a delight!  Two beautiful pincushions which have gone straight into my various sewing baskets and pretty tiny gifts.   The strawberry tape is perfect!   Susi also went for embroidery details on her pincushions; you can see more below including  French knots for the flower centres.

This was a really fun, quick little swap organised by Erin that brought some pleasure back to Flickr.  There seem to be a lot of little swaps like this going on there at the moment so keep a look out!