It's 8:00...do you know where your needles are?

On Monday of this week, President's Day, I attended a fabulous Open Sew with several quilting friends from my guild. There really is just nothing like spending nonstop hours sewing with no one asking you to do anything else, like find a particular Barbie shoe amid the rubble of plastic doll finery, or run pell-mell to throw a 2 year old on the potty before the dam bursts. Forgetting all other responsibilities and watching a little silver needle go up and down all day is really just pure bliss now and then.

So one of my quilting friends, Jill McCaffrey, brought these little cupcake pincushions as "favors" to the Open Sew. Apparently besides being an amazing and artistic quilter, Jill is also quite the little crafty chic, and whipped these up for everyone the night before the Open Sew. I just had to have this yellow and pale green one as it matches my studio perfectly - so perfectly, in fact, that the first photo I took of it on a shelf against the wall was unusable because it blended right in. Seriously, how cute is this thing?

So, being as thrilled as I was with my new cupcake pincushion, and also being the proud owner of one of those ubiquitous tomato pincushions that was probably given to me by Santa about 25 years ago and was completely falling apart, I couldn't wait to move right into the cupcake! After I had transferred all the pins, I started in on a few needles.

But here's where it got freaky. As I gently squeezed the tomato (something they frown upon at Hannaford), more and more needles started showing up, poking right through the fabric. After I pulled the first ten or so out, with no end in sight, I decided I had to start counting. Then I decided I needed to take my rotary cutter to the tomato and perform a complete needle-ectomy. By the time I was done, my tomato was beyond splattered:

and I had found a total of 49(!!!!) needles of all sizes inside. Now, I knew I had been losing needles now and then, but 49? I almost hesitated to even admit I could be so disorganized as to misplace 49 needles and not even really notice.

So the moral of the story? If you are missing needles, take a rotary cutter to your pincushion. And be careful when you squeeze the tomatos.

Beth Helfter, EvaPaige Quilt Designs