Pincushion Caddy!!!

Whilst doing some serious Blog browsing this week, I came across a desginer and blogger Anna Maria Horner. She desgins beauiful fabric and makes lovely clothes and quilts, plus many other things. One of the things I saw on her blog was an AMAZING pin cushion with a hole in the middle of it to store your bits and bobs, such as scissors, thread, pens etc. So after about 2 hours trawling through google and google images I could not find a pattern ANYWHERE!!! I eventually discovered, by going back to Anna Maria's blog and looking at the comments on some of the photos that she had pretty much invented this product and had a pattern for it in one of her books. However, being an English crafter sometimes has it's disadvantages, and currently this means that I can't simply nip out and buy this lovely book, so I set about trying to make one myself.
I had to rope in the brain power of my house-mate for some of this, clearly I didn't pay enough attention in Math' class and she did!!! Having worked out complicated things such as the circumference of a circle (2πR) (R=radius (middle to edge of circle), I could then set about creating this.

My 1st attempt wasn't great, I made a 10cm diameter circle and used 15cm long side pieces, the result being a rather short and VERY fat Caddy. Once I had made one, I didn't want to make another practice one, so I was brave and started cutting out my chosen fabric. Almost all of it, bar a few pieces, is Amy Butler, bought on my last trip to America. This 2nd attempt used an 8cm circle, with 10cm long side panels. I also needed something to hold the internal 'walls' up against al the padding needed to hold the shape, and I happened across a Pringle tube being only slightly too small...I padded it out a bit with wadding etc and it seems to have done the trick. It provides much stronger support than I would have been able to achieve with anything classically designed for fabric.

Bottom of the pincushion, had to be hand sewn, but came out ok.

It was ALOT of work for a pincushion, but it is rather beautiful and hopefully will last me a long time. What do you think? I would love to have your comments...
Next project is going to be another mobile, this time a Space theme, using some AMAZING 'Glow in the Dark' thread I bought recently!!!

Inside the hole in the middle.