Sea Turtle Pincushion

Just a little project I made on a lazy Saturday. It been driving me (and my husband) crazy my stashes of straight pins in drawers, bowls and even in the rug (oops) all over the house. So rather than purchasing that tomato pincushion that everyone has seen. I decided to make one from the scraps of fabric I had in the house, at first I was going to make a hedgehog pincushion but I had green velvet that I wanted to use, so I came up with making a turtle pincushion.

To make the shell I cut large oblong circle about 4 inches in diameter in its smallest width, to give it more texture, I stitched several circular shapes with my sewing machine but this could definitely could be hand stitched.
To make it into a cushion, make several stitches along the circumference of the oblong circle, then pull on the thread to create a pouch, fill with stuffing and pull thread taught closing the pouch, sew the shell closed.
I then used some light brown felt to make the head, legs and tail. The legs and tail are one piece, to create a template for this I placed the finished shell over the piece of  felt and sketch how I wanted the legs & tail to look like, them cut them out & purposely made them uneven to be more realistic.
Here a top view of the turtle:

The turtle head was a relatively easy, just a folded a regular piece of felt in half, then cut it into a rounded edge, then sewed the rounded edge with overcast stitch . I then turned it over, and stuffed it.
To put all the pieces together, I attached the head first, then the larger piece of felt in the shape of the turtle's legs and tail.
Yep it was that easy! Now time to put in the pins..