I’m best known for my free doll clothes patterns and tutorials, but this week on ChellyWood.com, I’m going to share my beloved Dutch windmill pincushion project. Tomorrow I’ll be posting the free pattern, and Wednesday I’ll post the free tutorial video showing you how to make this darling little gem.

This windmill pincushion project makes a great gift for anyone who loves miniatures, dolls, sewing, embroidery, or needle crafts. It stands about 16 cm high (approx. 6 inches) when complete.

As you can see in the images, I used it as a sort of embroidery sampler, showcasing various embroidery stitches. If you’d like to practice your embroidery stitches, this project is great for that!

For the little flowers in the flower box, you can, of course, use pre-made silk flowers, if you’re not predisposed to doing embroidery. In fact, you could skip the “embroidery sampler” aspect of this pincushion and just sew it up and give it away.

However, for those of you who want to try your hand at the embroidery stitches (and for those of you who already enjoy doing embroidery), I’ve been creating a series of stitch tutorials to accompany this project.

Last week I posted a tutorial showing how to do the Algerian eye / star eyelet stitch, which makes a very simple flower pattern. I’ve also got an older tutorial showing how to do a daisy stitch. And this week, I’ll show you how to make the rambler rose stitch.

Another tutorial I plan to post this week is the detached chain stitch, which is what I used for the leaves on some of the flowers.

So I hope to see you tomorrow, when I post the FREE printable sewing pattern for this Dutch windmill pincushion craft project!

 

Additional Information:

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Some of my followers have wondered what motivates me to give my patterns away for free. First of all, I’m a librarian by trade. Librarians love free stuff! We believe that the more a person knows, the more enriched their life will be. So it may sound kind of crazy, but I want ChellyWood.com to become a sort of library of free patterns that help people learn to sew doll clothes.

If you’d like to learn more about my motives, feel free to visit my Chelly’s Books page.

Please be advised: when I get some time off from my job as a school librarian, I’m planning to develop a new layout for ChellyWood.com, and whenever you redesign something, it’s possible for stuff to get lost! So if there’s a specific pattern you’ve bookmarked because you want to make that outfit, I advise printing the pattern soon. Links may not work quite as well after I redesign my website.

My Gallery Page is the easiest way to search through all of my patterns to find what you want. Each image on the Gallery Page takes you to links for patterns and tutorials.

Need help printing my patterns? This link offers a tutorial showing you how to download and print my FREE patterns using Google Docs. (For the older print-a-pattern tutorial, which uses Microsoft Word, click here.) To review my difficulty scale (demonstrating how hard or easy a pattern is by the number of flowers displayed), take a look back at this blog post.

Please note: you must enlarge my patterns to fit a full-sized piece of American computer paper (8.5 x 11 inches or 216 x 279 mm) without margins, before printing.

My patterns are now available through “Creative Commons Attribution.” This means that I created my patterns (and therefore I own rights to them), but I’m willing to share them with everyone who will tell people about my website.

Here are some helpful ways to tell the world about my patterns:

• You can pin them on Pinterest.
• You can post or like them on Facebook.
• You can tweet about them.
• Use any other form of social media that appeals to you!

Are you new to sewing? I’ve got a playlist of tutorials for the beginning sewists on my YouTube channel. It includes video tutorials showing you how to do a basic straight stitch when sewing by hand, how to use the whipstitch to hem a garment, how to sew on snaps, and even how to design your own doll clothes patterns, for those who are new to design and alterations.

In case you haven’t heard, I have actually designed some commercial patterns for Lammily LLC. You might want to visit the Lammily website to see what they’ve got going on.

If your question wasn’t answered here, feel free to submit a question. You can also write to Chelly Wood at this address. I’m always happy to help my followers find what they need, so they, too, can make amazing doll clothes and crafts.