pin cushion FAIL

I have wanted a new pin cushion for years. Mine was given to me by my mother many years ago, and while it is my favorite color (green!), it isn't my style at at. It's perfectly functional though, so I replacing it has never appeared at the top of my to-do list. However, when I saw this adorable tutorial for turning a jar into a pin cushion, I had to give it a try. This project would kill two birds with one stone, since I also needed a jar to store the buttons I've been collecting for crazy quilting. Plus, I already had a jar for it. As soon as I had some free time I set to work.

The tutorial instructs you to cut a circle of fabric by measuring the lid insert and increasing the radius of the circle by 1 inch. When I cut my fabric I misremembered it as increasing the diameter by 1 inch. That makes a bit of a difference; I had wondered why I had so much trouble getting the fabric around the stuffing when assembling it. I didn't realize my mistake until I had already hot glued it together.

Rather than give up or start again, I decided that even if there wasn't enough stuffing for it to work as a pin cushion, it could still serve as a decorative jar for my buttons, so I pressed onwards. I decided to cover the rim of the lid with beads. Since the rim is a curved surface I had to do this very slowly, covering one small section with glue at a time, letting it dry, then rotating a bit and starting again. After a few days of intermittent turning and gluing, I had the rim covered. It was done! All I had to do now was screw the lid onto the jar and admire my handiwork.

I put the lid on and twisted it. And twisted. And twisted. Nothing was happening; the threads weren't catching. When I glued the cardstock on to cover up the fabric folded under the lid I must have covered the threads just enough that they won't screw on! I am not happy about this development -- you can see from the picture above how cute it would have been had it worked -- but I haven't quite given up yet. I will try to prey the cardstock off (I didn't glue it on all that well, thankfully), and shall hope that fixes the problem.