When I wrote my last post I told a little white lie when I said I'd been sitting around doing nothing all day. I did in fact complete two projects..

First, I reinvented a skirt that was headed for the trashcan. I've had this skirt for a really long time and before me it belonged to someone else. It was a Goodwill find that I really loved and hated the thought of throwing away.

Just look at the fabric and tell me you'd want to salvage it too.  The vibrant colors, the gauzy material. yes, I must find a way to keep it.

The skirt has an elastic waistband which has unfortunately come to the end of its life (probably from stretching so much across my wide girth). The way the elastic was sewn into the fabric made removing it a difficult task and not one I cared to tackle. It suddenly hit me today that there was an easy fix...I'll make it a drawstring waistband! I simply folded the waist over, sewed it up leaving an opening to insert a drawstring which I made from a piece of ribbon found in my stash.

Easy-peasy, I have a new old skirt!  

Spurred on by that success, my next project was to create a pin cushion that could be attached to my sewing machine. I got the idea off Pinterest and couldn't help but wonder why I hadn't thought of something like this sooner.

If you're a sewer I'm sure you can relate when I say how much I hate keeping up with straight pins that I remove from the fabric I'm sewing. I have one of those magnet thingys many of us use as a stitching guide and a pin holder, but it can only hold so many pins before it becomes more a nuisance than a help. Sometimes I keep a small cup near my machine to slip the pins in as I pull them from the fabric. Unfortunately that cup has been know to mysteriously fly through the air scattering pins all over the room.

I also have two traditional pin cushions. One is the infamous red tomato that every sewer has . The other is a cupcake pin cushion that my SIL made . Both the tomato and the cupcake work great on a table but not necessarily near my machine...just not enough space.

When I saw this pin cushion that was made specifically to be attached to the machine I thought "what a great idea. I can make one of these!"  Here ya go, this is what I'm talking about
 

What do you think? Pretty handy I'd say
 There's probably not a market out there for these pin cushions so I don't have plans to mass market them. I do think however, that some of my sewing friends might just find them handy and want to do what I did - take someone else's idea and run with it. I say go for it, but send me a photo, I want to see the end result!