Michele Made Me

One birdie's attempt to figure things out. Oh, and crafts.

Tutorial: Toilet Paper Roll Pincushion

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Okay. Couple of things you should know. I love toilet paper rolls. Can’t get enough of them. Secondly, I love flowers. Love them. You may have noticed a theme over the 3 months of this blog’s short little life.

That said, today I’m combining those two passions into one useful and pretty pincushion!!! And, no Amy, this isn’t yours! 🙂
Let us begin!
First I’m going to send you back in time to this post where I show you how to mark out your toilet paper roll (Conveniently, you’ll have to scroll down to the last flower… sorry…).
So you end up with these pieces here. Note that I glued an additional small ring to the bottom of the tall piece.

I painted them Christmas green. You should also paint the inside of the largest piece (vase shape) too, btw. And then I let it all dry.
I then dry-brushed all surfaces with a couple of lighter shades of green.
All pieces now looked like this. At this point I glued the little crown onto the tall piece.
I then found some appealing fabric (my little sister, Ariane, gave me this particular one for my birthday…) and cut out a circle and a rectangle. The circle should be the diameter of your tall tube plus 1/2 inch (for the 1/4 inch seam allowance all around). Your rectangle should be the height of your tall tube plus 1/4 inch seam allowance on both top and bottom. Your rectangle should be long enough to go all around your tall tube plus 1/4 inch seam allowance on both sides.
Hand baste your circle to your rectangle right sides together. Machine sew the short edges of your rectangle together. This will give you a fabric cylinder. Go back over the hand basting with your sewing machine.
Turn your cylinder inside out and stuff it with batting.
When it is tightly stuffed, hand sew a running stitch all around the open edge leaving the thread ends to dangle.
Grab both thread ends and tighten. Tie a knot.
Stuff the little fabric cylinder into the tall toilet roll piece.
The top should look like this.
Cut out a cardboard circle the diameter of your tall piece and paint it Christmas green.
Once dry, take a pin and perforate the edge of your circle. Also perforate the bottom edge of the vase shape with an equal amount of holes.
Sew the circle to the vase shape like so.
Take a flat pebble and glue it down to the inside bottom of the vase shape for added weight and stability.
Slide the tall piece into the vase shape and glue it in place.
And the pincushion is born! Welcome to the world little pincushion!

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Comments

  6. sydney @ memorable minutes says

    that is sooo cool. I am always looking for fun projects with toilet paper rolls. I have boxes of them saved for my classroom. And since they are cutting back teachers i may not get to use them for that. I LOVE IT!

  8. Anji* says

    I love this! It looks great, and nice re-use of toilet paper tubes! I have been told off for hanging on to too many of them 😉

  10. Leslie says

    I have been saving toilet paper rolls for awhile now waiting for the perfect project! I think that I just found it! Thanks for linking up this cute idea to Hoo's got talent!

  19. Dees says

    What a lovely use of toilet rolls. My class has to make a protea flower for an Art exhibition. This looks like the ideal material to use. Could you show me how you would do this?