Jelly jar pincushion

As promised, here's a picture of one of the jelly jar pincushions I made over Labor Day weekend. This craft was inspired by this post on Martha Stewart's website. The idea is great, but the instructions on her site aren't the most helpful. Here's what I ended up doing:

1. Trace inner lid onto a piece of cardboard--I used an empty cracker box from our recycling. Cut out circle.
2. Take piece of fabric and trim to a circle at the very least 1" larger than the cardboard. I made two of these with 4" squares of sample fabric, but this one I used a 1930s replica charm square that I decided didn't have enough contrast to be in my Dear Jane quilt.
3. Make a gathering stitch close to the outer edge of the circle. Keep the needle on the thread for the next two steps.
   
4. Roll some Poly-fil into a tight ball and layer between fabric and cardboard. Pull the gathering stitch on the fabric so it all stays put. This is tricky because you want to put the fabric side against the table to tighten the stitch, but that pushes on the Poly-fil and makes it all want to pop out!
   
5. I found it best to then make some more stitches across the cardboard so that the gathering stitch would stay and the edges of the fabric wouldn't pop off the cardboard. This was tricky.
6. Apply very hot hot glue to the inside of the outer lid. Quickly squish pincushion part inside and screw it onto the jar.
7. Once the hot glue has cooled, unscrew outer lid, put glue along the top ridge of the inner, flat lid, and quickly screw the outer lid and pincushion on again. When it's all cooled, you should have a one-piece lid that is a pincushion!

As you can probably tell from my directions, this was a little tricky to do, but by the third one I think I got the hang of it. I have nine more of the dozen jars I bought (also, they're the quilted jelly jars, so they're extra cute!) and these are intended to become sewing kit gifts (to go along with the needle books) but I just had to keep this one for myself. Only, what to do with it? Ah yes, my button collection! It was previously in plastic zip bags. Much better. And with some Shrinky Dink pins, even.