Pincushions were a valuable tool in the 18th century, when most people made and repaired their own clothing. These little keepers of pins are prevalent in art of the time, often found hanging from aprons and waistbands. We see two main types: pin balls and pin pillows. They can be simple or elaborate, but they all serve the same purpose. Below are images of a few surviving examples. All of these happen to be embroidered, but not all were. Some pin balls had a silver band to join the two halves, and others had ribbon.
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| Pinball, 1750-1800, Winterthur Museum. This pinball is embroidered on both sides. |
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| Pincushion, 1770-1800, Manchester Art Gallery |
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| Embroidered pincushion, 1770-1780, Colonial Williamsburg |
I went to a couple of different sources for making this practical 18th century tool. The information and photos on Kozy Kitty's tutorial were really valuable in helping me visualize how the pin ball came together, even though I opted not to embroider mine. You can find the blog post here. For making a pin pillow, At the Sign of the Golden Scissors has an excellent tutorial, illustrated with details from 18th century paintings and engravings as well as photos of the step-by-step instructions. It is available here. If you don't want to start from scratch for yourself, there are also lots of wonderful kits to be found, too many to list here.
You can use wool roving or wool scraps to fill your pincushion. I have a plethora of the latter, so I sliced them up into even smaller bits, and they worked very well.
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| Pieces cut out for heart and square pincushions |
Finished products:
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The red one is a bit large, but I love how the heart turned out!
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