Keep your pins looking neat with our ditsy sewing essential

What you need...

• Fabric, cotton: white, prints
  Waste canvas, 14 count
  Aida, white, 14 count
  Stranded cottons as in the key
  Needles: sewing; tapestry, size 26
  Paper
  Cardboard
  Polyester fibre filling
  Iron-on interfacing
  Pencil

instructions

1. Tack the waste canvas onto white cotton fabric. Using two strands of cotton for the cross-stitch, thread up a sharp sewing needle. Follow the chart and cross-stitch the rose motif over one block of waste canvas, as you would on normal Aida fabric.

2. When the cross-stitching is complete, remove the waste canvas. Press the work carefully. Place the hexagon template onto a piece of scrap paper and draw round it carefully with a sharp pencil. Repeat this several times on the same sheet of paper.

3. Using the template as your guide, cut out 14 paper hexagons. Tack the cross-stitched rose onto white fabric and trim to fit round a paper hexagon, leaving a 1cm seam allowance. Make sure the motif sits centrally on the patch and tack carefully in place, folding the edges in neatly. This will form the centre of the hexagon pincushion.

4. Cut another white cotton hexagon for the centre of the back. Press the iron-on interfacing onto pink fabric and cut out a small heart. Attach to the centre of the white patch and sew round the edge with white running stitch.