Secret Valentine Exchange Part VII - make it a macaron!

Quite how I didn't already know @mrskylliearcher is a mystery. But I've just spent a lovely morning having coffee with her and handed over the August instalment in my year of the Secret Valentine Exchange. (what a coincidence is the first image in that link!)

Amongst many talents, she makes the most incredible looking macarons, and she suggested I make a macaron shaped pincushion when I put out my original callout for project ideas. I tried :)

The kids thought my macaron pincushion looked more like a hamburger. I was aiming for a sort of strawberry shell with chocolate ganache. But I'm not sure what my decorative bits would be. Coffee? Probably not a good flavour mix. I have said before that I can't bake, right?

I used a Straight Stitch Society pattern which is for a sewing pouch and pin cushion in the shape of an apple or orange (Apples to Oranges Sewing Kit Sewing Pattern). In order to have the less circular shell I simply sewed the panels together with a shallower curve.

The macaron opens out to reveal the ganache is in fact a needle pad (surprise!) and the bottom half is a cute little pouch. Just to really mix my flavours it's lined in a deep raspberry red. It took a bit of rummaging through the scraps bucket to find bits of fabric suitable, but I wonder if it wouldn't have been better to have not aimed for realism and to have used floral quilting cotton leftovers. It certainly would have been less hamburger-y.

I picked up some nice sewing notions at Fibresmith and stuffed as much as I could into the bottom pouch.

Since we live in the same city and are both bicycle fans, we picked a café halfway between us and cycled to our rendezvous. It turned out to be a glorious spring morning and a brief coffee catch up turned into and hour and a half of chatting.

An absolute delight!

Now, if you want to see some really impressive macarons, go check out Kyllie's Instagram feed!