Victorian Pinball
Small pinball to fit my travel sewing basket
I’m a pinball wizard!
No that’s not true. But I did make this pinball because I needed a smaller pincushion to fit my travel sewing basket.
The Inspiration
An antique embroidered pinball. I really like the different colored fabric used. The embroidery is exquisite.
I used scraps for this project. I first made the outer fabric pieced together and did some victorian crazy quilt style embroidery, then trimmed it into a circle.
You can see the scrap batting I have rolled up into a ball in the upper right of the photos - you can’t use that. I made one half of the pinball and couldn’t pierce it with a needle, go figure! So, I cut it open and used some fiber fill. The half sphere came out smoother that way too.
I used a piece of champagne box to form the half-spheres then you just stitch the fabric around the filling - any hard cardboard will do. I keep the champagne boxes since they are decorative and I break them down to make thread winders. I wish I wrote a little note on the back, just in case someone disassembles it.
You can also see how I wrapped the fiber fill in thin batting to keep the shape but you really don’t need to do that extra step.
You take both half-spheres and sew them together. Then I sewed on some black picot edge ribbon to make it look more victorian.
This pinball is great for holding small applique pins and the white pins are easy to see on the black fabric.
I also added extra ribbon to it, I got that idea from an antique pinball which was probably used as part of a chatelaine? The long ribbon seems like an extra but if you are across the table and need to pull it out of the basket the long ribbons come in handy!
