My First Biscornu

I'm not sure how I managed to not even know what these things were until a few months ago - biscornu are very popular among stitchers, as little tokens, pincushions... things.  The word itself is French - biscornu, which means 'bizarre' or 'strange'.  According to this translator, it means "crooked" or "weird looking."  I think the English might be 'thingamabob" or "doohicky" - hee!

I wanted to try one but I was a bit lost on how exactly you take a pair of squares and create such an odd shape.  This tutorial helped me immensely, but I knew I wasn't going to get it until I did it.

Over Thanksgiving, I worked up a couple of small squares - one using variegated green floss, the other variegated red. The key to my choices had to do with minimal difficulty, minimal 'stuff' to keep track of, since the stitching would be done in a moving car, or while visiting my daughter.  Before I left, I'd finished the stitchery and started puzzling together the connection of the two squares (and I need to practice that - it could be accomplished much more elegantly than I did it).

I stopped and put it away when I reached the point where it'd need to be stuffed, because I hadn't brought any stuffing.

So last night, I pulled it back out and finished it off, using a green and red button to pull it all together and... wow! It worked!  I've now got a nice scissor-fob and pincushion, and there will be more of these in my future!