Bitty Gifts

Made these up for my sister a few weeks ago and have been waiting for her to get the package before I posted the pics! Was fun doing these, the snowman doorhanger pattern can be found here, and the little pouchy thing was from a book I purchased at Amazon.

I told my sister that all in all, if I were to be paid for the hours put into those, that snowman door hanger would cost about $400, damn expensive! LOL! It has some applique in it, of which I'm not that good at, and I had to pull out a few parts to redo. Other than that, it was easy enough. The little pouch is a Japanese lineny sort of fabric, really popular in Japan now, with a babushka (??) Russian doll design on it, I love that fabric and couldn't wait to make something out of it! In terms of time it only took about 20 minutes to put together, really easy, and, very convenient for your purse!

Mee A Bee

Meet my new foreign housewife friend in Japan who makes these adorable little bags out of Japanese fabrics. And lucky for me, she lives close enough for me to drop by on my way home from work sometimes, for a cuppa or comparing sewing projects, or best of all, hashing out the problems involved with raising your children in a foreign culture and school system.

Mee A Bee

you can't scare me!

A plaque contributed to my sewing room by Janina...

BIRTHDAYS!

Many many birthdays surround my life, and inevitably I am often late with presents. I made this cushion cover for Janina's best friend Emma, who turned 17. It was fun to make and completely different from anything I've done so far. I didn't have a pattern, but saw the idea somewhere online, and decided to try making it. I could tweak the pattern a bit, but overall I think it turned out decent enough!

Free patterns

There are SO MANY wonderful and free patterns online, I've rarely bought a pattern myself. Whenever I want to make something, I type it into the search and see what comes up, and more often than not, there is a pattern online for it. Slowly I'll be adding links to those lovely free pattern in the link list on the side of the blog. My most recent creation from a free pattern is from the Pink Penguin blog, a fabric basket tutorial which I LOVE making, it's pretty quick, versatile and the end result is nice enough to give as a present!

My Motto

One of many mottos!! Janina gave me this sign for my wall, I find it very true!

FABRICS!!

Picked up this great pile of fabric at ABC Craft downtown Tennoji. Pretty reasonably priced and lots of selection of not just fabric, but beads, yarn, tole painting, traditional Japanese crafts and more! Am not too sure what I'm going to do with the fabrics yet... but I know from experience that it never hurts to have too much stash!

Tissue Box covers...for you Missy!

I promised my cousin a tissue box cover months ago! She even bought the fabric for it! And, sadly, it's still sitting in my 'projects to be done' pile! The problem is the shape of the American tissue box, which is a cube, vs. the Japanese tissue box which is a slim rectangle. I find it so much easier to make covers for the Japanese boxes, but the American one is much more fussy, and until I can get the pattern down to where I really like it, I am hesitant to cut into my cousins lovely fabric and possibly mess it up! Here are 2 covers I made this weekend, which I think turned out pretty nice, and I'm almost confident to start working on Missy's cover!