I still have one........and it gets regular use.

btw, they still sell these at Joann's. And online.

My mother had one. It’s probably still in her sewing box.

Mine is at least 60 years old and didn't come from JoAnn's. 😄

I still have mine. :) It's Dritz, the great purveyor of basic notions. A good Pincushion has cord or ribbon dividing it to aid organization. Sometimes people clip it off, but it comes with an emery bag, for honing points and polishing needles and pins, shaped like a strawberry hanging from the stem. I think I got mine for school sewing class. I have other pincushions, like one for quilting pins, and a magnetic one, which, I guess, isn't actually a ”cushion”, but I still use my tomato for general sewing.

Yes! Still for sale here.

I’ve seen them for sale here. I’ve got my grandmother’s, and she died 60 years ago.

I think I still have my mom's somewhere. I can remember being small and wondering why it had a strawberry.

That's a classic, for sure! I wonder how long that design has been mass produced?

I still use mine - I think it's from the 70s/80s, bought when I started getting serious about sewing, and I may have more than one - and I have a couple of emery strawberries too, which get regular use.

I inherited many notions and supplies from 2 great aunts who were seamstresses, and I've collected vintage things over the years as well.

This is like the one I actually use most - not a tomato 😀

Yup, Grandma did. There was a smaller attached strawberry that was filled with something she called "Emery Dust", you inserted your needle and it was supposed to sharpen it. Everyone must have had the same thing, LOL, and hers did not come from JoAnn Fabric because I just a kid and that was a million years ago!

Annie

So I did a tiny amount of research. There's a probably apocryphal story going around the ’net that there was a fad for putting tomatoes on the mantle as a symbol of posterity and they started as poor man's tomatos. That doesn't ring true to me, as well as other statements going around the ’net that there's no originating citation to prove this. In the Victorian era, when these became popular, fruits and vegetables were often used i; decorative items. Just look at all that heavy majolica. The popular version with the strawberry emory bag has been sold in the USA for decades by the Dritz company (now a subsidiary of Prym). Dritz started in notions after WWII, but I couldn't find a date for the tomato. And, of course, other companies might make them as well.

I still have my tomato pin cushion, but I use a magnetic one now instead. I only have to drop the pins close to the pin holder, and it will catch them. It will also pick pins that I have dropped.

If you had cross posted to the Sewing Forum, it would be on topic.

I opened up an old one I found somewhere. It had many needles that had been pushed through in it. A surprisingly high number of needles.

Mine is still here too. Don't know how I got it.

FWIW, I have a container with a magnetic top, made for paperclips, that I've used for pins for decades. It's like this:

And I recently bought a bunch of clips, which I've seen a number of people using in sewing videos. Haven't tried them yet, but I'm looking forward to not pricking my fingers when I do 😄

[Hanging head in shame...] I admit it. I machine sew (carefully) over perpendicular pins...

Love the look of those clips, but I'd be fumbling terribly trying to remove them without stopping. Pins pull out easily, besides my machine not objecting to running over them. I don't know if that's because of the oscillating race, or what.

I have a few of those.

Sue

I believe some machines are OK to sew over pins, others are not. I was taught to pin in the direction of the seam and pull out the pins as I sew. I have very old Singer machines that I'm pretty sure were not designed to sew over pins, so when I pin perpendicular to the seam, I often hand baste and remove the pins before stitching to avoid breaking my needle on a pin.

Totally. I have a several useable sewing machines (not counting my grandmother's, etc.). One, fancy in its day, with a rotary race, is the most persnickety thing ever. If you forget to lower the presser foot, you have to disassemble the whole thing, because any teeny tiny bit of thread in it will prevent a decent stitch. And it hates pins, even nowhere near the needle. But it's programmable. My oscillating machines, if you forget to put down the presser foot, will make a snarl, but you can lightly tug, and it comes out whole (I think that's physically impossible with rotary), you can finish sewing the seam, and deal with the snarl when you're done. Since you don't cut it out on the machine, no chips of thread get in the works, and the race is dead easy to clean, anyway, without dismantling the whole works. And they tolerate the lint and thread dust of today's project without protest. They treat pins like bumps of cloth or embroidery and just kind of slide over them. I don't know if they're even available like that anymore. All of my machines are at least decades old.

Mine are from the 50s, I believe.

I have a serger that's from the 80s, but rarely use it

I have a Viking Huqvarna that I bought in 1992, which my older machine quit working (It was computerized and would have cost more to fix than it was worth.) and an even older serger that still works.

Last year I bought a new Brother machine that is computerized, with the hope that it will not break down like my previous computerized machine did. The Viking is completely manual and therefore easier to use and control. I do not want the machine to make decisions for me - I know how to make all the adjustments I want myself.

The Viking is very powerful and will sew through many thicknesses of fabric - the Brother will not.

I never sew over pins, even though I could, now that I have a magnetic pin holder. It is much easier to drop pins near the pin holder than it was to put them in a pin cushion.

Last year I also bought a four-thread Brother serger, and this I like a lot, even though it is quite a pain to thread and required frequent oiling. My old serger is a 3-thread, and I keep it in L.A. with my Brother sewing machine. I keep the Husqvarna and the Brother serger in Cathedral City, as I have a better sewing setup there, not to mention infinitely more light!

I didn't know the strawberry had a purpose.

I have a tomato but I prefer a dish. The dish also hold the clip thingies (which are actually really great for so many things not even sewing related). Okay, I confess, it's an old candy tin. My 1960s sewing machine will sew over pins. It is not delicate.

I have a magnetic pin cushion but it has insect pins on it. They are not the same. :)