I have to show this to you!

Remember that list of Things to Do in 2016 from last week? Well, embroidery on felt is one of them.

I love embroidering on felt! I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because I had so much fun with this needlebook years and years ago. It was such a “free form” project – no rules, no preconceived ideas. Just stitching whatever occurred to me.

Yes, that was certainly the beginning of my romance with stitching on felt.

Well, for Christmas, I received the most adorable little felt pincushion from a very kind reader. And I have to show it to you, so that you can see that stitching on felt can be creative, delicate, and addictive!

Here ’tis! This is a bottle cap pincushion. Are you familiar with those? They’ve enjoyed quite a bit of popularity – you can find tutorials for them online, all over the place.

Jen Segrest offers this basic bottle cap pincushion tutorial on Flickr. She has quite a gallery of amazing little bottle cap pincushions on Flickr, too – you should check it out, if you like tiny little embroidered things made from felt.

The idea is that a plastic bottle cap is used for the base of the pincushion. It’s surrounded by a felt casing that can be embellished in pretty much any way your imagination will take you. The pincushion is firmly packed full of fiber fill.

This particular pincushion I’m showing you today was stitched by Holly. It’s a little crenelated castle tower. But not just any tower, mind you!

The tower has several inset little lighted windows, neatly stitched around with one tiny thread in backstitch.

Climbing the walls of this tiny tower is a flowering vine, neatly stitched in stem stitch, French knots, and daisy stitch.

The French knots make perfect tiny roses!

The vine makes the tower really beautiful, as it crawls around the walls and over the windows. But the real personality in the piece shows up right here:

Rapunzel’s golden braid, tied up with a blue bow! It’s tiny, and oh-so-perfect! Infatuating, isn’t it?

I’ve been yearning to do something with felt for a while now, but when I received this little treasure in the mail, my resolve was absolutely confirmed.

I love my little Rapunzel pincushion! It has inspired me with all kinds of ideas that I’ve been jotting down hither and yon. I even started hoarding bottle caps from everywhere and everything, thinking I’d try my hand at working up a few tiny pincushions of my own.

The thing about little pincushions like this is that they’re not only cute as all get-out, but they’re super handy. If you travel with projects, or if you have several projects going, or if you stitch in different rooms in your house, it’s so nice to have a little pincushion next to you for each project, where you can sink your needles securely or add a few pins in case you need them. And little cushions like this make nice traveling companions – they tuck into a project bag very easily and take up a lot less space than a full-sized pincushion.

So, some inspiration for you! Grab your scraps of wool felt, sort out some thread from your stash (and maybe some beads, too?), strip your milk carton or your water bottle of its cap, refer to the tutorial linked to above, search around online for some inspiration (Pinterest has a ton of bottle cap pincushion boards), and go to it!

But beware: these little things can lead to a serious addiction!