A Custom Pincushion

I'm back!  We've had family from Scotland staying with us so I've been distracted from writing and sewing!  This is the best kind of distraction though.  My little Etsy shop is busy with people buying Christmas gifts and I've been working on several custom orders.  

I just popped this one in the mail today.  My brief was to make a cat pincushion from some photos sent to me by my customer.  The colors and design were picked in collaboration with  her.  As usual I began with a sketch, moving on to making paper pattern pieces.  I keep all my paper pattern pieces in little labeled ziplock bags but I'm getting so many different ones, I really need to come up with some system for filing/storing them.

The cat is a long haired black cat with some brown here and there too.  To embroider the cat and get that variation in color I used my regular DMC black floss and also some hand dyed black floss which by nature has a variety of shades.  

This is my box of hand dyed floss.  I don't used it often for pincushions because it is a lot more expensive than the DMC floss I usually use but for a project like this it is perfect.  

The side band is red, a lovely proper Christmassy red with white flowers and green leaves and swirls.  It is very pretty, the colors all work together beautifully.  The underside of the pincushion is dark grey.  

These colors are hard to photograph!  I always have trouble with reds and I also had to lighten the photo a good deal so you could see the embroidery stitches on the cat itself.  It is prettier in real life!  My customer is happy which is the most important thing of all.