Cupcakes

The Cupcake Pincushion pattern by Cindy Taylor Oates of Taylor Made Designs won as the next project.  I guess it goes along with dd's latest cooking endeavors--cupcakes.  Hard to guess on that one, right?  Yes, she's gone wild making cupcakes of late--chocolate chip mocha with chocolate sour cream frosting, spice cupcakes with cream cheese frosting and just plain ol' chocolate cupcakes w/ fudgy frosting a couple of times.  Likes chocolate...and cupcakes!

Here's the pattern I used:

Looks almost good enough to eat, doesn't it?

Here's mine:

I think it lacks the tasty look for some reason.  sigh.  Well, I should get plenty of practice since I ought to make more for an upcoming class that I'm doing using this pattern. 

Anyway, a little info on it--I added some polyester quilt batting to the bottom to make sure the filling didn't fall out since that's where the opening is.  Maybe a little less next time.  The pattern suggests filling either with sand or crushed walnut shells--that last one was a surprise to me.  Never heard of such a thing, but they do indeed have bags of crushed walnut shells at the pet store in the bird section (thankfully!  The pattern said the reptile section--yuck.).  I used walnut shells as a filling for this one.  I'd like to fill another with sand and a third with emery, the traditional filling for the little strawberries on classic pincushions.