Wrist Watch Pin Cushion

I saw the Dandelion Deaigns Watch Pin Cushion on Create and Craft and loved the idea as I don't have a lot of room in my craft room and when I'm sewing I always misplace my pin cushion but this attaches to your wrist so you always know where it is.

I put this on my Amazon gift list (which I always keep up to date) and my sister kindly brought it for me for my birthday last week. Unfortunately delivery took ages (over a week) but when I got it I found it also came with instructions to make a watch tape measure (just without the extra materials even though the contents said it contained them but I know Laura brought just the watch pin cushion kit).

I read the instructions through first and found I needed to provide my own thick plastic circle and needle and also need to cut all the pieces. It would have been nice to have been provided with an embroidery needle as I only have thin sewing needles not being into embroidery so the thread was a bit thick for my needles. I think kits should come with everything you need so you can make that item straight away so this was a bit dissapointing. The instructions suggested a circle of plastic from an old school folder but I used a circle cut/melted from a CD! (Hubby's idea and he is the one who cut it out). I did think of cutting a large piece of shrink plastic and shrinking it so it went thick but the CD idea worked fine.

The instructions also didn't seem very clear, with some steps not explained such as how to transfer the clock face onto the fabric (luckily I was aware from using iron on pens so used the same process of ironing on a hard surface and using a dry iron with no steam).

You are given a sheet of basic embroidery stitches but the sheet doesn't tell you what herringbone stitch is or how to do it (for one step of the instructions) so I had to google it (although the instructions did say you could purchase a book from them with more stitches...) It also mentioned tacking the interfacing for the middle of the watch, but looking at the interfacing I found it had adhesive on so was able to just iron it on which worked fine and sewed the ends so it didn't pop off. 

It only took me a few hours to make it and I'm pleased with the results but think I would have struggled with the instructions if I hadn't seen it on TV and the finished results they had and also if I'd never hand sewn before it would have been a bit confusing.

Now I won't loose my pin cushion while sewing!