Beautiful pincushion. You won the battle with pdf too. Thanks lots.
Cleodaisy

thanks very much for sharing will certainly give this a try.

Well Thanks again for all the kind words everyone! i was trying to make the directinos look like what you would see in a store bought pattern.

Janis you had an interesting idea:

That is quite a quandary! The only thing my brain could storm was to use polyfill for the filling and make the cake top with two layers. In the outermost layer, you could position grommets to insert your fake candles through. Here is a picture of grommets so you can see maybe why i thought of them. Just curious Janis... what did you decide to use to make the candles and flames?

Lara, thanks for the eye candy! Just what I need, another vintage thing to start collecting. Actually, I have many vintaqe plates in my home, I will have to rummage through them.

I saw this and fell in love with it..I was at Goodwill today and found a cut glass saucer that had a lip on it..so I got it, brought it home and glued a 4" glass candle holder to it and I have a beautiful little cake stand, so now all I need is some white satin...can't wait to get to fabric store to get some..I have made several of the dress form pincushions that are glued on to the candle holders...love them too...so guess where I'm going after church tomorrow...Hancocks here I come...LOL

My sister was a cake decorator for years and she made my wedding cake. This really hit home with her due to that she used to decorate cakes and now makes the most beautiful crib quilts with high quality fabric. Many thanks for sharing this picture and the pfd pattern.

Buzzingbumble, I thought that the candle could be a simple tube of fabric with a little yellow flame cut out of fabric and treated with the Joann Taylor fray stop, or at least that's who I thinks makes it. (its the kind in the gray packaging that the tube has to be heated and then shaken before using. its great stuff as it drys clear.) I was wondering if I could make a fabric rose and fasted the candle in that and then fasted it to the top. The stitching would be hidden by the petals of the flower. Do you think it might work? I really don't want to have anything that would rust or be hard in the cake, so I wouldn't put any pipe cleaner in the candle, but could stuff it tightly with fiber fill.

Beautiful pin cushion. Thank you so much for sharing your tutorial PDF. I can't wait to try this one. A few of my friends will have special gifts this year (if I can get it right)!