In mid 2020, I was searching for interesting glass beads and found Nancy Smith on Etsy. Nancy is a glass artisan who makes her own glass beads via lamp work. The Crucible has an informative article describing the lamp work process. Nancy makes all kinds of shapes including food beads. Inspiration came after finding Nancy’s colorful cabbage beads. I’m familiar with many types of fabrics and thought it would be fun to pair Nancy’s cabbage beads with Kaffe Fassett’s cabbage fabric. Technically, Kaffe Fassett’s fabric is named Brassica but I’ve always referred to it as “the cabbage fabric” – haha. I placed a custom order with Nancy for a full rainbow of glass cabbage beads.

I had been collecting Brassica fabric for many months knowing I wanted to make a dedicated pincushion batch with these fabrics. Pairing the fabric and beads made creating this batch interesting and fun.

Each pincushion I make always has a crystal/glass beaded pin. With this batch, I felt like an additional pin to complement the colorful fabric would make each pincushion more interesting.

Happy quilting and crafting! ▶︎ ▶︎ ▶︎