Featured Vintage pincushion -- home-made or commercial? Era?

I'm thinking this pincushion is mid-20th century? Is it likely home-made or were items like this sold commercially?

Does she have an old world peasant appearance for any particular reason... was this type of look popular at one time?

 

Adorable, makes me smile

 

Think she's one of those crafts projects that were so popular at one time. This one for using scraps of material & probably a worn out sock.

 

How cute! I'd feel bad sticking pins in her.

Are her hands filled with emery?

 

She makes me smile, too.

 

The commercial ones I remember being everywhere at that time had a tomato body for pins with an attached strawberry for needles. My mother had a larger one & I had a little one.

 

LOL @ sticking pins in her. I know what you mean!

All of the stuffing feels like batting to me.

 

Yup, my mother had one of those, too. I may have it somewhere here, not sure.

 

I found her among my mother's things, but my mom wasn't much of a sewer so I doubt she made it. Plus I don't remember seeing the pincushion when I was home.

My mother did a lot of antique and thrift store shopping, so she probably picked it up there. Some of what she collected were oddball things that had visual appeal, and I'd definitely put this one in that category.

 

1960s-ish, 1970s-ish from the prints.

Debora

 

Thanks, Debora!

 

CX, is that the stuff that the little strawberry is sometimes filled with? I ask because mine seems to be filled with something "finer" than the batting of my own pincushion? Does emery grit sharpen the needles!

 

Yup, it's supposed to sharpen needles.

 

Oh, my. I have TWO of these...: a rather small one, from when I was a kid, and one that's a fair bit larger, about 3" in diameter. I use them all the time.

My Russian Blue cat, Stoli, absolutely LOVES them. If I leave my sewing for even a few minutes, he steals them & hides them. A couple of years ago, he actually pulled the "strawberry" off the little one & hid it under my Christmas tree. It was lost until we took the tree down and found it, under the tree skirt.

Just yesterday, when I finished a sewing project and put away my sewing machine, scissors & accoutrements, before going out, I didn't realize that my "tomato" wasn't with the other sewing stuff. I was actually miles away, on the highway, when I realized that I hadn't picked it up & put it away.

I called my husband from the road & asked him to look for it. He looked, but he didn't find it.

When I got home last night, I started a search. I finally found it, right in the middle of my dining room table! I KNEW it was Stoli who'd "stolen" it - it's just his "thing"!

 

I had completely forgotten about this. Our cat would also carry the tomato off if she got the chance, although no funny stories about where it turned up. We may have always caught her in the act. Of course, did not want her to swallow a pin or needle, so my mother, too, had to make sure she put it away when not in use.

After we came home one evening & found a regular labyrinth of thread leading from the spool set up on the sewing machine, along the hall from that room, into the living room, wrapped around furniture legs here & there, she also knew she had better make sure to put the cover on when leaving the machine set up ready for action.

 

OMG, Bronwen! That's EXACTLY what Stoli does, too!

A couple of years back, he stole a red bobbin & "decorated the house" for Christmas! The thread went from one room to the next - the entire 1st floor was "decorated"! The thread went in & out, chair leg to chair leg, table to table - it was really incredible how "intricately" he had operated!

Just 2 days ago, I left my sewing machine out, uncovered, to make my daily call to my 91 year old mother. I was working on a big project (the one I mentioned earlier) & planned to get back to it right after my call.

When I did get back to it, I found that my machine was "unthreaded".... There was a trail of teal-colored thread, and I started to pull it & rewind it onto the spool (which was still on the machine.) I wound & wound, eventually realizing that fully half of the thread on the spool was missing.

Suddenly, I heard that absolutely unmistakable sound of a cat upchucking... There was Stoli, and he "gave up" a foot or two of thread onto the floor... I guess some of it must have been "stuck" in his mouth & got swallowed.

I KNOW BETTER than to leave any part of my sewing untended - I really do - and I keep promising myself that I will NEVER do it again - even for a minute - yet, sometimes, I "forget"...

 

Many years later, different place, different cat. Woke up to a similar sound & saw about 6 inches of plaid ribbon still hanging out of the mouth of Clovis, whom I had only very recently adopted. She was more than shy, had only just begun to come out of hiding, & then only when I was asleep. (Or she thought I was.) You can imagine just how successful I was in catching her before the last of the ribbon went down. Not. The plaid ribbon was sort of like woven plastic, not the papery kind. Told the vet there was about 18 inches of it. When he got it out, it was more like 32 inches. He gave it back to me in a pill vial. Interesting to see which dyes survived a stomach acid bath (red & yellow) & which did not (blue & green).

 

Oh, heavens, Bronwen! Years & years ago, I had a cat, Mr. P, who somehow managed to pull the Butterball "turkey string" - complete with yellow plastic "end caps" - out of the trash - and swallow it all! THAT one came out "the other end" and - believe it or not - did not require a vet's assistance - but man, did it ever freak me out!

 

The next day I was going on a vacation trip with a couple of other people. Could not be home to keep an eye on her. And she was so skittish, not sure I could have caught her to clip off lengths of it as they emerged from the other end. The vet told me all the dire things that could happen if not removed. Eventually realized that he was an hysteric who made his patients even more nervous & found a different one.

 

Ah, yes. Don't they all?