Time to make presents!  Having become acquainted with some many sewers of the past couple years, pincushion rings were on my radar – question was, how to make them with lasers?

Pincushion rings and bracelets are very useful for quilters and people the use a lot of pins because it holds pins close – no need to find a pincushion nearby. I decided to attach the pincushion to a laser cut frame, much like my pendant frames.  I put together a couple designs and made a deep frame front, and solid thin back.

Laser cut frames

My biggest mistake in making these was sizing them for rings, not sizing them for usefulness.  The smallest ring, a 1 inch circle with a little over a half inch center, was pretty impossible to make a cushion.  The bigger circle is 1.5 inches, and I think it could go up to 2 inches.

Very tight fit with just  a tiny bit of  fabric.

I originally wanted to use the cut out circle in the frame to attach the pincushion to, with the intent that it would sit snuggly back in the frame.  I learned two things attempting this – 1) hot glue doesn’t work on wood and 2) the laser cutting kerf isn’t big enough to tuck fabric all the way around – it barely squeaked in to get the corner in for the picture.  To make it work, I would have had to make the gap wider.

For the second attempt I took a clue from this Instructables tutorial – sew a little pouch with a circle of fabric and filled it with cushion materials.  I used a mix of walnut shells and cotton batting.  A running stitch around the edges allowed me to cinch it up.

E6000 is a crafters friend.

I used E6000 to glue the frame to the cushion, and then to attached to the solid back.  Because I was gluing at the 11th hour, I didn’t actually finish the rings.  I wanted to let the E6000 cure fully before attaching the prefabricated ring back.

Cute little ring size!