Betz White Cupcake Pincushion

Cupcake Pincushion, originally uploaded by Bright Side.

I thought I'd blog about this little cupcake pincushion as it's been getting a fair amount of hits on my Flickr stream.

I received the lovely Betz White book "Warm Fuzzies" for my birthday, mainly because I really wanted to make some of her signature cupcake pincusions. Obviously, this had to be my first project from the book! I bought some wool jumpers from the car boot in the next village along, which is a very pretty and posh village so there were lots of good quality jumpers there for the picking. The colour choice was rather muted but I liked how the two browns worked together, looking a bit like chocolate icing. After bunging the jumpers into the washing machine and waiting impatiently for them to dry, I got started. The instructions were really easy to follow, even for a sewing novice like me. I made the cheery cherry out of some Spunky Eclectic BFL I've got in my fibre stash. I was really pleased with how it turned out, plus I've found it really useful.

Since then I've made two more projects from the book- the next was a Pugsy puppet that I made for my class (no photos yet, will have to get some next week) and then I made some mittens for father's day out of some felted cashmere jumpers I bought in a charity shop. The mittens turned out really well, they're so soft and again, the pattern was really easy to follow. Photos of the mittens are on my Flickr stream.

I really recommend Betz's book if you're interested in using felt this way. It's really well written and beautifully designed and photographed.

OFSTED UPDATE
The results are confidential for three weeks until the official report is published. I'm only allowed to say that it's fine and that we think he saw the best bits of the school in the day he was with us.