Pincushion for Swap

I have been wanting to participate in some of the fun sewing swaps online, so when I heard about a pincushion swap on twitter being organized by Cara of Cara Quilts, I went ahead and put my name in.  The person that I got as a partner hadn't listed their blog or flickr or any preferences for what they'd like so I had pretty much a blank slate in thinking about what to make them... which actually had me stuck for a while because I of course wanted to make something they would like but didn't know what direction to go in.   Ultimately inspiration struck and I ended up making this pieced pincushion using a flower from Caleb Grey's Suburbia fabric line (with the same fabric as backing).

It is a bit on the larger size but hopefully not too big to be useful.  I had fun using some of the solids in my stash... since green is my favorite color I had quite a good selection!  I filled it with crushed walnut shells, which I got at a pet store as Cara suggested - which was as cheap as buying a tiny amount on Etsy but now I have a 5 quart bag of it!  Thinking I may see if folks in the DC modern quilt guild are interested in any of the filling, maybe I can bag it up and give it away to folks at the next meeting.  I may make more pincushions in the future but I will definitely never go through all that I have.

I'm sending this off to my partner today - I really hope they like it!