Orange Rug Yarn Musings

As a member of the cyberchapters of both the EGA and ANG, I don't have a lot of occasions to wear a chapter nametag, so I was thinking that it would be nice to have a nametag that would somehow be useful for our virtual meetings too.

As a new chapter CyberPointers has just come up with a nametag design and since I'm on the Education Committee I got a chance to try the pattern out early. I have the very bad habit of using my clothes as my pincushion, so I decided to finish my nametag as a mattress pincushion. Although the pattern is designed for canvas, I stitched my nametag on linen and left the background unstitched.

My friend Valorie predicts that other members will want to copy this, so here's how I did it.

I'd never made a mattress pin cushion before, so I checked out a bunch of different web sites for directions. Mainly I followed the diagrams given in http://verom.canalblog.com/archives/2006/11/16/3182816.html (in French and which for some reason my html won't validate when I link to it), and used this tutorial to fill-in when I needed more help.

I stitched a running stitch around the outside of the front piece, and then made an identical sized back. For the side, I stitched a narrow piece with the same number of running stitches as it took to go around the front on each side. I used a feather stitch to decorate the side piece.

From somewhere (and I wish I remembered where so I could give them the credit they deserve), I got the idea of putting a magnet in the pin cushion so that you can use it to sweep for missing pins. I used a magnet I'd salvaged from an old shower curtain. I stitched a medium size safety pin on the back of the nametag, so it can be pinned on, or attached by putting another magnet under your shirt or jacket. Also, I didn't have any interfacing, but I did have WonderUnder, so I made my own interfacing of the batting I used for the filling.

The initial stitched pieces:

2 pieces of batting with magnet stitched between them:

Back view of batting pieces WonderUndered in place:

The back stitched to the sides: