Fabric Shelf Block

This is my block for Amber's theme, "Sewing", for the Ringo Pie bee. Well, Amber's month was...ahem.... April.., meaning I was four months late! There are no very many good excuses for the delay except that this block was actually quite time-consuming. Can you tell? Although I enjoyed making it, I was doubting my own sanity throughout the process. 'Seriously? Am I really going to tackle this beast?'


It was extremely pleasing to have it finished though! While I was sewing those uncountable fabric pieces, I really wasn't sure if it was going to look like I had planned. The finished result is, I say, quite close to what I wanted it to look like, so I had a big Yay session!


I love fabric shopping and I know you do too ;) There is something about walking into the fabric store and seeing lovely fabric on the bolt on the shelf. It fires me up to go look for some fun fabrics!



I love the vibe and I know I will always appreciate any opportunity to go fabric shopping as long as I live because it is so therapeutic and exciting.



This quilt block for me was to create the kind of a fabric shelf that would hopefully remind Amber of the awesome feel at the fabric store ;) I don't know if she would like any of these fabrics in this fabric shelf, so I added some drawers that she could imagine there are maybe some cool fat quarters in them!


At first this shelf had these legs like above. After mulling it over for a few days, I realized they are unnecessary, so I went ahead and ripped the seams and removed the legs.


The reason I wanted to add legs were because I was SO inspired by Kylie's easel block which she did such an incredibly amazing job creating perspectives for. I really wanted to do something similar. Although I was pleased with the 3D effect (not as amazing as Kylie's of course), I had come to terms that these legs don't make a lot of sense. They would have to be so super tall to the point some children could easily sneak underneath the shelf! Not so safe! Reconstruction had to happen!

I have been enjoying paper-piecing so much lately and am really excited to get caught up in this bee! Next up is a traditional house for Kerry!

Thank you for stopping by ;) I hope you have a wonderful weekend!

SP QAL August Block! Dishy Treat!

Dishy treat, anyone? How about some soft serve ice cream with your favorite syrup?  Or maybe chocolate cake or three scoops of ice cream?  Well, if none of these sounds appetizing, I've got a bunny for you too!

I am so excited to tell you that these patterns are now available through superbuzzy!!
This pattern includes four different dishy treats shown above!  I had so much fun paper-piecing them and I hope you'll have tons of fun with them too!

It has been so wonderful to see everyone's popsicles popping up in this flickr pool!
(I'd love it if you joined us to share your popsicles and dishy treat blocks there!!)



Here is how my SP QAL blocks look together! Quite sweet and fun ;)
Thank you for letting me share my new patterns with you! I am very nervous as usual, but hopefully some of you will have fun with these patterns!!!
Hope you are having a great week so far!! Mine has been crazy busy but fantastic!

Texting while Sewing Conest

"Texting while sewing" is definitely something I love to do; in fact,
I rarely ever sew anything without texting! Typography fabric has
become really popular among quilters in the past few years, and I am
loving the fact that the availability of the fabrics with text designs
just keeps getting better and better!

Amy of During Quiet Time came up with this fun contest where
she invites you to enter a 12" block made using some text
prints creatively. You can enter it by blogging about your block and
the contest and linking up via a Linky post on Amy's blog which
will be up August 27, 28 and 29, 2012!

A great thing about this contest is freedom! You can use whatever
method you are comfortable with; normal piecing, paper-piecing,
English-piecing, applique, and whatever! You can go ahead and
create your own text fabric (printing on fabric? stamping?) if
there aren't perfect text fabrics. Also, you can enter more
than one block if you wish! (Separate blogposts will be necessary.)

And of course there are lots of awesome prizes! Check them out here!

Amy will choose top ten, and Kerry and I (!!) will be the
judges to pick the top three entries among the ten! I hope
you will consider entering your texty block to this contest!!
I am so dying to see what everyone will come up with!!!

Here isthe flickr group for the contest if you are anxious to share your block ;)
Text prints can be found in a lot of stores now. (I have some in my shop too ;) )

Hope you are having a great day!

Call me a Lucky Duck!

I admit I have been such a lucky duck lately! I have received lots of lots of lovely gifts from both my lovely real life friends and sweet blog friends am feeling like I already had a Christmas! Most of the gifts were for my birthday (thank you girls!), and others are something that had arrived way before and I had been meaning to share with you! I'll be focusing on only handmade gifts and vintage gifts just because I know that's what many of you are most interested in ;)

Those caramels above were made by the lovely Sam! I literally had no idea how HUGE of a difference there is between store-bought caramels and handmade caramels until I had her caramels! They melt so nicely in the mouth and taste just delicious. Both Joe and I became such a big fan of her dessert instantly! In case you are curious, the cups and the saucers are from Afternoon Tea shop, one of my favorite shops in Japan! I have a record of never leaving a store without snatching up something, which I don't know if I should state this proudly lol.


This tote was made by the sweet Claire. How clever is it to iron-transfer the nice crown on the tote and add the beautiful fabric flower and the ruffle! I love the English-ness so much! I have never been to England but it sure has become one of the top countries to visit for me! I have 'met' many lovely English people, enjoy so many movies/shows that take place there (The Game of Thrones to name one), and just love the designs that come out of the country that are everywhere in Japan! Silly of me, but I feel that I am one step closer to being in England if I carry this bag around. A girl can dream, can't she?


Here is another creation of Claire I am so lucky to call mine! She has such a beautiful blog where you can find a tutorial on it here. I love everything she makes and am dying to see the projects she has been working on for her etsy shop's re-launch! This bunting has already found a place to be hung in our apartment. So lovely!


I have been wanting to talk about my friends Kerry and Penny's new patterns launch! I am sure most of you know about their Sew-Ichigo already and how cute of paper-pieced block patterns they have come up with! Not only are they both uber talented, they are such sweet sweet people! Kerry and Penny made my heart sing by using my tutorials to showcase their cute blocks in projects! What I didn't know until I checked the mail today was both their cute projects made ways to my little apartment!!! I had NO idea that they were heading my way!!! I am so happy!!! The fabric box above was made by Kerry. Can you see how she did such a lovely way to showcase the buttons inside the box??? Every one of these buttons are just precious!!! I'll have to think of a way to use this box without covering up the bottom completely ;)


This is a fabric basket Penny made! See how cute it is to see the spool, button, spool, button... on the basket?? How stinkin' CUTE?! I just love that their patterns are so versatile! I can think of so many projects using these patterns! I would really like to make a sewing cover with these blocks and a mini quilt!! If you have yet to snatch up your copy of Sew-Ichigo's new patterns, you can do so here on their blog!


This is how they look together. So cute, aren't they?


Here are such fun gifts from my friend Mary! She has made me so many nice things!! I treasure every one of them because everything she makes shows that she knows my colors and my taste in fabric/designs and everything!! I can't believe she re-purposed those thrifted boxes into such beauties! Inside the sewing box was a penguin necklace among others, that is even too cute to wear!


Elnora is absolutely amazing. She is such an inspirational person for me for so many reasons! She is so encouraging, supportive, thoughtful, and most definitely extremely creative! I have always admired her works as all her projects are very eye-pleasing, made with lots of thoughts, and executed professionally, which I am sure you can agree if you see this house pouch and the coasters!! I swear I'll never be able to place a cup on any of these cups for even a second.. ever!!!!


Last but not least is this mini quilt that was made by Kaelin! Ever since she posted a picture of this quilt on her blog, I was drooling over it and getting jealous of whoever it was destined to. Joe suspected it could possibly be mine, but I told him to stop teasing me so I won't get my hopes up. So you can imagine how I had a big squeal when I opened the package and found this lovely in it!!! Kaelin and I have talked about our love for Japanese cherry blossoms before. How lovely is she to remember that and to make a quilt for me to hang in my craft room!! I feel so lucky that it is sooo mine!!!


One of the things I am very much looking forward to when I see Kaelin in person is to hear her say my name in the southern accent! She did an awesome job to change the last letter from i to m so to reduce syllables in my name! I am so loving my new name!! Joe and I were talking about what would happen if we moved to the south in America today. (We give each other this kind of random questions all the time.) I told him that the first thing I would is to introduce myself as Ayums, hehe ;)

Before I head bed, I want to show you some gorgeous vintage goodies that made ways as gifts!



Beautifully hand-stitched coffee grinder tea towel from Krista!


Lovely apron from Penny!


And this adorable embroidered seven dwarfs from Kerry!! They are all so special!


Thank you for reading such a lengthy blogpost ;)

I hope you are having a lovely week so far! I'm off to bed!

xo!

The winner!

Congratulations goes to gccmom whose comment was the 28th!!







Congrats, gccmom! I will contact you shortly ;)