Cupcake Pincushion & Tarn Hot Pad

Here is a cute little bottle cap pincushion that I made last night. My idea was to make a red with white dot mushroom, but it looks more like a cupcake.  I'm thinking of making a whole bunch of cupcake pincushions.  They are so cute.

I just used white embroidery floss to make the white dots.

Yesterday I was thrilled to see that Cindy from myrecycledbags.com posted a pattern for a tarn (t-shirt yarn) trivet / hot pad.  I made a tarn hod pad a few months ago and I love it.  Its my favorite hot pad.  So after seeing Cindy's pattern for a flower hod pad, I ran to my craft t-shirt bin and searched for a shirt to cut up and make tarn out of.  I could only find a white shirt.  The shirt could have been dyed first, but I just wanted to try out the pattern.  It took me 15 to 30 minutes to make this quick and easy pattern.  I used an I hook instead of the J hook that the pattern called for, because I just couldn't find my J hook.  

For some reason the camera just didn't want to take a good picture of the white hot pad.  It seems that white and red are hard to photograph.  However you can see a beautiful blue one on Cindy's blog.