I use fiberfill. My dd is deathly allergic to walnuts so I quit signing up for giveaways on blogs and am very careful about which etsy shops I order from because so many people are now using pincushions with walnut shells in them. For the same reason I never do swaps or round robins or bees or anything like that. I seriously considered never buying pre cuts again and having to prewash everything but so far I just let shops know about her allergy so they can be careful when packaging our order.