Friday archives: inspired by Loobylu

I'm quite the joiner these days. First the celebrity sightings meme and now the Friday Archives. Sadly, many of my early projects were archived under the category "To Be Finished Later." I'm pretty sure I still have a few not quite complete projects from my high school days packed away in a box somewhere. I'll get to them all in turn, but this week I want to tell you the story of this pear pin cushion and how it changed my life.

Soon after discovering the Blogosphere I happened upon Claire Robertson's wonderful website Loobylu. Quickly a world of craft blogs was revealed to me through her posts and links to other sites. Although I hadn't used my sewing machine for anything more than a quick mending job in almost a decade, after a few weeks of reading Loobylu I decided I needed to make a Softy. I was totally infatuated with these pear pincushions and decided I would attempt one myself. But I had no pattern and had never really made anything without a pattern before. So I went out and bought some pears and measured their dimensions and starting cutting out paper templates to make my own. A few iterations later and I had the shape I wanted. I stuffed it, embroidered on a face using Claire's as a guide and - voila - my very own pear pincushion. I haven't stopped sewing since.

Thank you, Claire, for providing me with the inspiration to start making and creating again.