DCMQG Secret Sewer Swap - part 2

This is the next gift I made for the secret sewer swap at the DCMQG retreat.  There was actually some confusion with swap partner assignments, so both myself and someone else made gifts for the same person. Since Jessie had to leave early, Aubrie and I compared gifts and decided to give some of them to Anna, who did an amazing job organizing the entire retreat and hosted us in her home.  Since Anna arranged everything, she did not participate in the swap, but Linda had the great idea that we all give her gifts to thank her for orchestrating the entire weekend. I ended up gifting a fat quarter, as well as this wrist pincushion.

To make it, I loosely followed this tutorial with a few modifications.  First, I lined the wrist strap with SF-101 and a layer of batting to give it some extra stability and cushioning.  I also didn't double layer the strap.  If I'm remembering correctly, I cut a piece 4" by some length that was more than enough to wrap around my wrist with some overlap for the velcro join.  Second, I did not hand sew the pincushion to the strap as the tutorial suggests.  It seemed like this would be too flimsy, especially since the filling I used made this pincushion a bit heavier.  Rather, I machine stitched it similar as you would a purse handle with this kind of design:

This was actually my first time making a pincushion of any type and paper piecing hexagons, and I really enjoyed both tasks!  I need a new pincushion myself, and thankfully I have plenty of filling!  I've heard a lot of good things about walnut shells, so I picked some up from the pet store, but the smallest bag I could find was 5 quarts! Even after giving a bunch out at the retreat, I still have enough for about 50 pincushions. 

Anyway, hopefully Anna finds this useful and doesn't mind too much that it wasn't originally made for her (she had seen it before I gave it to her, so she knows that it was originally intended for Jessie).

It's definitely handy to be able to wear it around your wrist and not have to worry about it getting knocked of the table (or in my case - batted and chased around by the cats, who also like to steal the pins...probably not a good thing...).