Giveaway Winners!

Thank you for all of you for coming to hang out
on my blog and entering for my giveaways!
As usual, I let a random number generator to
pick winners' numbers. Congratulations to three of you -
I will be contacting you very soon!

By the way, I finally added this function into my
Blogger html to number each comment using this tutorial.
This helped me a lot spotting the numbers corresponding to winners almost instantly!
Hope you have a lovely weekend! (a nicely long Memorialweekend if you are in the states!) I'll try to catch upwith my sewing projects and hopefully some hiking and packing, and deciding a place to move in will be happening!

May Giveaway Day

It's this time of the year again when Sew, Mama, Sew!
kindly coordinates one day when sewing/quilting bloggers
give away sewing-related items! It's a lot of fun and I am
so happy that I am able to participate this time!

I've got two sets of giveaway prizes, so I'll have two winners. Hooray!

My first prize is a bundle of quirky Japanese fabrics.






A fat quarter of this retro sewing print.
I found this fabric three years ago when I visited
a teeny tiny fabric shop near my home in Japan.
It would be really nice if you could use this
for your sewing machine cover project or something.


A fat quarter of this retro kitchen print designed by
a Japanese textile designer Suzuko Koseki for Yuwa.
It's out of print and is pretty hard to find if not
almost impossible. I just love it so much.



A fat quarter of this super cute sweets and international
caricatures print. I think it is an original print from
one of the fabric stores I stopped by, because I have never
seen this print anywhere else. Totally adorable.




A small cut of this print from Vintage Art Store
Collection measuring 12.5" x 22". I love this print too.




Lastly, let me include a small piece of my
Spoonflower print that I finally got in the mail
a few weeks ago. I threw in a bunch of French
words which are taken from a flan recipe in French
in a random order- very random, so if you know French,
you might want to avoid looking closely. It would
be fun to use this print for your small patchwork project.


Ok, so my second giveaway prize is this awesome book.



Natural Patchwork by Suzuko Koseki.
I feel like I talked about this book a million times on my
blog already, but it really is an amazing book.


To enter the giveaway, please simply let me know
which prize you are after (1.fabrics 2.book 3.either)
and I will pick two winners and announce them
on March May (lol thanks for the heads up!) 25th :) I will be happy to ship internationally!

Good luck everyone!

Thanks for stopping by here!


Edited to add: Please post your comment on my blog in order for me to count you in for this giveaway. (I'm sorry but emails don't count just because I want to make my process of drawing winnerssimple and easy peasy.. Thank you!)

Blog Tour: Stripped Down Patchwork (Book Giveaway!)

I'm excited to host a stop for a blog tour for
Stripped Down Patchwork by Erin Gilday of Patchwork Underground today (Day #7!).
I got to know Erin through her great projects
in Stitch magazine which are always so unique and vintagy.
Have you seen her biker wrap skirt in there? So cute!
What I found later is that she is not only super creative
but also fun and friendly, which you know if you are
a reader of her blog for sure :)

I love the way she combines solids with other fabrics
in such a clever way with a vintage twist, so I was
really glad to see all her 12 practical projects in her book use
solids somewhere. Also, all these projects feature Seminole
patchwork technique. (Not sure what it is? She has
explained it very well here over Craftzine.)


You are not the only one if you thought these projects
would take forever to make - I thought so too until
I read in the book how you can save lots of time usingthe patchwork technique. For example,
This very complicated looking patchwork is actuallydone with four fabric strips sewn together whichwere cut across to make 20 thin strips that are sewntogether. A lot simpler than it seems, right?I think I can do that!
It's hard to pick my favorite projects since they areall useful and fun, but this headband caught my attentionthe most as I was flipping through pages of this book.I would love to make one of these for myself!
I have an extra copy of this book to give to one of you!To enter the giveaway, please leave a comment under thispost by May 25th on which I will announce a random winner!For more chances to win a free copy of this book,remember to stop by these blogs :)

Leisure Arts Blog – Monday, May 16
Sew Daily – Tuesday, May 17
Craftzine – Wednesday, May 18
Craftypod – Thursday, May 19
Whipup.net – Friday, May 20
Burdastyle – Saturday, May 21
Pink Pinguin - Sunday, May 22
A Green Banana – Monday, May 23
I Think Sew – Tuesday, May 24
Happy Zombie – Wednesday, May 25
A Mountain Hearth – Thursday, May 26
Sew News - Friday, May 27
Pat Sloan’s Blog – Saturday, May 28

Log Cabin Pincushions Madness once again

Have a lovely weekend, everyone!

Lil Foxes for Mom

I was really glad to be able to whip this up for my mom for
Mother's Day gift this year. She has been a great
mother for three of us, me and my young sisters
and I thought I'd express my appreciation by making
a wall hanging for her. I used this lil fox pattern
I had purchased awhile back from the super talented
Sonja of artisania. Have you seen her foxes in love mini quilt and Anne Marie's take on the pattern here? I couldn't wait any longer after seeing those cute foxes.


Do you see that these three foxes are missing something?First of all, the tip of the tail of each lil one is not existing.This was completely an accident, but I'll tell my momthat it's because only a very cool mom can havea gorgeous tail that is not cracked. And these guysare missing snouts because I just didn't have buttons suitable for them, but I'll tell her that that'sanother thing only mom can have because she ismore special and sophisticated than us. lol.And I do know that she will look at me with suspicious eyes.

I didn't realize how nicely the teapot fabricmatched with the leaves fabric I used to make a binding tape for it until it was all finished. She might actually like this side better.


I really wanted to make another one to give to my mother-in-law who is also a great motherof three, but I simply run out of time.Kim, you might get something better in the mail though!
Thanks for stopping by! Have a nice weekend :)

Stitch Magazine Summer 2011

Thank you so much for your very kind and encouraging
words about my envelops and mailbox block for Ringo
Pie bee! It made my day, no, more like my week! Thank you
girls! I've had many people asking for a paper-piecing
tutorial, so I will come back sometime in a week or so
with a simple printable pattern and an instruction on how
to paper-piece it, so if you have never tried a paper-piecing
technique and would like to learn one way of doing it,
please remember to come back :)

Today I would like to share with you 4 projects of mine
that are featured in the current issue of Stitch Magazine.



This might be one of my favorite projects I've ever made for Stitch.
These slippers are made for the 'Opposites Attract' theme in the issue.
The colors, one slipper being blue and green and the other being
red and orange, were suggested by my lovely editor and
I thought it was such a fun and unique idea!




It was a lot of fun putting together cute
and quirky fabrics.




This is a cat mat to accommodate food and water bowls.
The top is vinyl laminate, and it is backed with non-
slip fabric so that it will keep the mat in place.
I have to give this to my parents' cats. They make
too much mess around their food bowls.




Or I'll convince Joe to get us a cat once we are
in Tokyo. Wish me luck!




This is a checkerboard-inspired handbag made for
"the Good Earth" theme of the issue. Mixing different
shades of linen to make this was a lot of fun.




I like how they put some veggies in the bag!
Now I want to use this bag to go to Farmer's Market.Sarah of CoopCrafts has made a few of these handbags alreadyand you can read about it here :) I love how her bag turned out!




Natsuiro means 'summer colors' in Japanese and the same
word in Japanese Kanji character is sashiko-embroidered
on the side of the bag. This bag reminds me of the night
I worked on this until 6 am to be able to ship it off
via overnight shipping that day. I have this bad habit of
waiting until last minute to do anything, but this was
literally last minute. The other side of this bagmade cover of this issue (the words appliqueon this side competed with the cover lines). I am very flattered.

I am totally in love with this issue, because there are SOmany projects in it that I would LOVE to make! For example..



This cat house designed by my friend Penny!
Isn't it the cutest cat house ever?!?!
It totally drove me nuts when I first saw this.
I must make one for my parents' cats for sure!(or possibly my own cat?!)




This clutch made by Leigh is a must to make too!
I love the gorgeous gathering and the combination
of yellow and gray is the best!




Lisa made this super cool wallet! I want to whip up
a few of these for my friends.


Speaking of Stitch, all projects in the fall issue from
2009 are available for individual purchases on
their website now. You can find my odekake bag pattern here, which I blogged about here. Also, here is a link to my guest post on their blog where I was allowed to share four websites that inspire me.

Thank you for stopping by and reading this long post!Have a lovely rest of the day!!