Bitty Bread Baskets

Ever since I saw the pattern in one of my Japanese books to these baskets, I wanted to make them! And the next birthday that came along, I stitched up a few. They were quick sewing, and turned out really nice. Once I have a bit more time, I intend to make some for myself, great for serving snacks at a party!

Lots of little bits!

Some smaller projects I've worked on in over the past couple of months!

Scrap Coasters, based on Japanese fabric, with a touch of hand embroidery.

Japanese fabric flower. It's a good size, would work as a table center, or cushion cover when done.

More scrap coasters. I love this windmill design, one of my favorites right now.

Little sock owls my granddaughter and I made while she was visiting from Kanto.

Bunnies in the garden, felt bunny mobile, so cute!

100-yen shop find of the day! Cracked glass jar and pebbles (candle was mine). It's really pretty on the table at night.

Bitty Shopping Bag

I needed a smallish type quick-grab bag to throw my wallet, cell-phone and ipod into when dashing to the store for milk and eggs. Following AllPeopleQuilt.com's pattern, I came up with this little bag, a perfect size for 2 or 3 necessities and a quick run to the store! I used all Japanese-themed fabrics for the outside, and a more westernish fabric for the lining. I think it took just over an hour from start to finish to make this bag, any future replicas will probably be quicker. It's a great use of scraps!!

Whenever possible, I send Yoshi to the store for me, he usually manages to bring home the eggs!

Triangles Lap Quilt: pattern from The Temecula Quilt Company

The Temecula Quilt Company is a lovely little quilt store in Temecula, California. It focuses on Civil War reproduction fabric, and being near my mother's place, she often visits there. This year's birthday present was a year's subscription to their monthly kit program! I love their fabric, it's so soft, warm, soothing, and can't wait to dig into my most recent kit!

This lap quilt was used with their pattern, but not their fabric, I bought them locally. It took me less than a year to finish this off! Accomplishment for me! And I gave it to my step-daughter for her birthday this year. As you can see, the triangle lines are not the straightest, slightly crooked, but I still think it turned out cozy. I hadn't chosen the orange border fabric when I purchased all the others, but at the end I felt it needed something for color, and the orange was in my stash and seemed just the right amount of richness to set off the rest of the colors. I did the binding with scraps from the quilt itself, one of my favorite types of binding.

What excited me about this quilt, besides cutting out over a hundred triangles, LOL!!... was I tried out my new Quilter's Darning Foot to do free-style quilting at the end. I LOVED it! I can't wait to do more!! I didn't choose a good thread, I wanted to use some beautiful variegated thread I had picked up, but the machine didn't take too kindly to the thread and I had a lot of problems with it snapping, snagging, breaking, and so gave it up and settled on a less pretty thread. Overall though, I had a lot of fun making this quilt!

Some of the quilting with my new foot...

I decided to do a different quilting pattern on every other triangle row.

And a close-up of my mitered corner, they turned out really well!

My step-daughter said she loves it and hopes she can keep her kids from trying to cuddle up under it, since it's really only big enough for one!