What is a Pin Drum and How to Make One

The other day when I shared about designer Kathy Barrick, I mentioned that some of her patterns were for pin drums, and that that wasn’t something I had heard of (and from the size I thought it might have something to do with knitting).

A pin drum is a special kind of pin cushion that is cylinder, or drum, shaped, and they’re a rather traditional design that you don’t see all that often in “modern” cross stitch circles. Kathy’s designs are definitely historically inspired, so that makes sense that it is something she would offer and that I wouldn’t have seen it before since historical designs are not my preference for making.

I found a tutorial at Sirious Stitches all about how to make pin drums, and it’s pretty easy to do.

You just need a band of cross stitch that is as wide as you want your drum to be tall, and as long as you would like it to be around. In the tutorial she uses a bookmark pattern, but you can start with a design that’s made to be a pin drum, or you can design your own based on your own sizing specifications.

Once you’ve got that part done, you’ll need to make the top and bottom for your drum, which they show how to do with a bit of mat board and fabric, but you could probably use poster board or card stock or something else if you have that on hand.

Check out the tutorial for all the details on how to make this fun cross stitch pin cushion. It would be a fun gift to make for a stitching friend, and you can make them with holiday designs, floral themes or really any design you like and whatever size you’d like as well depending on the size of your stitching.

[Photo: Sirious Stitches]

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Stitch Designs with a Classic Look from Kathy Barrick

Lately I have been feeling like all of my clothes are looking a little worn or feeling a little tired. I don’t want to buy new clothes, though, so there’s been a lot of mending, altering and adding special touches to things that otherwise might get overlooked or not worn at all.

As an example, not too long ago I added a little bit of embroidery to a T-shirt, which was a lot of fun to do and made me start eyeing all my solid-colored garments and wondering how they might look with some stitching added.

Of course you can cross stitch on garments, too, whether T-shirts or woven tops, skirts, pants and more. But it can be tricky to transfer cross stitch designs to your garment to make stitching easier.

Much like with embroidery, it’s great to use a water soluble stabilizer to keep your fabric in place while you stitch and to transfer your design (or your cross stitch grid at least) while you’re stitching. Then you just wash away the stabilizer when you’re done and it will look like the stitching has always been there.

Ashley General Handmade uses Sulky Stick ‘n Stitch, which is a product I use, too. It’s easy to use and washes away cleanly.

To make it even easier, she designed some printable cross stitch grids at different counts that you can print out to draw your own cross stitch designs, but you can also print the grid right on the Sulky, so you can stitch on top of squares and then remove them when you’re done.

Brilliant, right?

She has pages as big as 8 count and all the way down to 20 (remember: the bigger the number the smaller the stitches will be) that you can download and print to make your own designs and also use to make stitching on clothing easier. I’m definitely going to try this the next time I want to cross stitch on fabric!

You can grab her printables over at Ashley General Handmade.

[Photo: Ashley General Handmade]

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