Christmas = KFC

Here is a little sneak peak of my second and sadly possibly last Christmas gift from me this year. (Can you still call it a sneak peak when you show 90% of it? lol)  I totally underestimated how fast time flies. I was told at the post office that it's too late to send Christmasgifts overseas via standard airmail now. So my gift list went from 20to 2 since all my recipients-to-be live overseas. So sad, butthis is a great lesson - I will start VERY, VERY early next year! 
Christmas is not celebrated in the same way in Japan, so there isno gift exchanges between family here usually. (I have never given Christmas giftsto any of my family, nor received one, but we have a perfect relationship :) )Christmas is rather a romantic day for couples and peopleenjoy a nicely decorated cake and KFC. Can you imagine what Joe's reaction was like when I told him we have to order KFC for Christmas this year? hahaHe said he would accept the idea if and only if he couldhave eggnog, which is basically impossible to find in Japan.Thanks to Krista for pointing out to me that I could make it at home.Well, I might have to do it so that we can have KFC!;)
Oh the winner of Kerry's Candy Cane pattern is**nicke... of kiss kiss......Quilt!Congrats, Nicke! I will contact you soon ;)

I hope your holiday making is coming along and you are enjoying every step of it! 

Secret Gift Making #1

Here is a little gift I whipped up for someone, hehe.
I know the recipient of this little drawstring bag reads
my blog, so I hope I am not ruining a surprise too much by posting this..!



I made this using the same method in this tutorial, but instead of 2 1/2" squares, I used 1 3/4" x 2 3/4" rectangles, which makesa 7 1/2" x 7 1/2" drawstring pouch. I also sewed the patchworkpanel onto thin muslin to stabilize it.
If you are anything like me, you had a longest list of to-make-forChristmas gifts to begin with, but now you are finally realizing that 1) Christmas is just in 10 days,2) you don't have time to cross off everything on the list,and 3) you need a Plan B - switching your initial ideas to something a lot quicker and simpler. At least for me, this happens every year, haha.

Here are some tutorials of small things you can whip up little quickand can be great gifts for your friends and family just to name a few:
Scrappy organizer by Leila of Where the orchards growQuick scarf and lined drawstring bag by Jeni of In Color OrderMini tote bag by Kerry of verrykerryberryScrappy armrest pincushion by Amy of During Quilt TimeNeedlebook by Amy of nana company2011 star desktop calendar by Nathalie of An once of creativity
Oh and you must have seen Kerry's amazing newest paper pieced Candy Cane pattern by now. It's on sale in her shop, but if you wouldlike to win the pattern, leave one comment on this post by Thursday midnight.A random winner will be announced here this Friday.
One more thing! I would be so thrilled if you checked outmy sister-in-law's etsy shop here! She's got lovelyhandmade jewelry for unbelievable prices! If you snatch anything from her shop, please say hi for me ;)
Hope you're having a great week!

Kerry's Winter Woolies Pattern - Giveaway!

Thank you so much for everyone who left comments on my organizer baskets tutorial! It's been so fun and rewarding to see your baskets popping up in the Pink Penguin flickr pool.I also enjoyed hearing about your plans for your baskets' usein the comments. I'll make a list of your ideas for the basketsand add it at the end of the tutorial post sometime soon.
I wanted to share with you a few projects I whipped up in this past few weeks. The mittens above were made usingKerry's first paper pieced pattern for sale! Isn't it the most adorable thing?! Have you seen Amy's take on it?Such loveliness! I especially love those mittens, so I am making a tea cozy with these blocks for my new small tea pot. (I enlarged the pattern quite a bit.)The pink mitten is mine and the other one is Joe's. When I saw the creature fabric, I had to snatch it right away because it was the Joe-est fabric I have ever seen! Joe doesn'tlike the fabric, but hopefully he'll change his mind after seeing a tea cozy, hehe.
Here is one of several tissue box covers I made for friends.I had quite a few failure attempts in making this pattern,but I ended up coming up with a pattern that is just a perfect fitfor a Japanese standard tissue box (it's so short!).I'll have to make one for myself!

And this is a block for Angela in Stash Trad bee.This is her original pattern called Cracker Scraps, and you can findher super easy to follow tutorial here! With her clear tutorial, I was able to make this without making a single mistake. It felt so good!!
Ok now to a giveaway! Kerry has allowed me to giveaway her Winter Woolies pattern to one lucky Pink Penguin reader!For your chance to win the pattern, leave one commentin this post by the midnight of October 26th. Good luck :)
Thank you for stopping by! Hope you are staying warm!

Mini Cross Quilt + Pinnie

September 30th was my fabulous friend Kerry's birthday!
I whipped up a mini quilt and a matching pinnie for her
earlier last month so that my gift for her would get there
on time. I surprised myself by finishing them up way before
the deadline - a week before her birthday. Unusual of me :D She gave me such a pretty pillow
for my birthday/house warming gift. (which I'll show
you how wonderfully it looks in my craft space once I am
done setting it up!) It is the cutest and most meaningfulpillow I have ever owned! I knew I would not be able to makeanything comparable, but I still wanted to send her
handmade love :)



Choosing fabrics for this quilt could not have
been more enjoyable, because each and every fabric
used here is what I know Kerry likes! Kumiko Fujita,
Suzuko Koseki, Denyse Schmidt, Lori Holt, cooking,
sewing, typography, vintage fabric, and linen - so ya,
we share the love for lots of fabric designs! And
you know it makes quite a big difference when
you are making something with the fabric not
only you but the recipient covet!




At the time I was making this, I didn't have a quilting
spay on hand, so the quilting didn't come out as flat
and nice as I had envisioned, but I like the fact it has more
"handmade feel" to it because of my not-so-great quilting.




Kerry has inspired me to use alphabet stamps for sewing
craft. If you are a big fan of everything she makes
like me, I bet you too have wondered about stamps
(if you have yet bought them :) I still need practiceto get better impression!



Here is a matching pinnie!Sewing teeny tiny pieces is another thing we both love :)



The back side is her initial 'K' pieced.


I had been meaning to blog about these on her birthday,
but I was busy whipping up tissue box covers for my
friends this past weekend. I'll be back to show you one
of the tissue box covers I made and hopefully other things too.
In the meantime, don't forget to check out Kerry's
great freezer paper/paper piecing tutorial and to
enter her birthday giveaway!

Thank you for letting me share my creations :)

Christmas Blocks

Are you guys in some Christmas mode by any chance?
Well I am because my small craft space's got
Christmas fabrics everywhere now that I just finished
two Christmas blocks! They are for Amber in the Ringo Pie
bee. Her theme is all things Christmasy, so I pulled out
all my Christmas-related printed fabrics and had so much
fun sewing with them while singing some Christmas songs ;)
The block above features 6 Christmas gift tags - two for
parents (Amber and her hubby) and four for her four beautiful
children. She has two girls and two boys, so I tried to
have two tags boy-friendly and the other two girl-friendly.

It was so much fun sewing this for Amber. I love reading
Amber's blog partly because she has such a lovely, lovely family.
If you have not read her love story with her husband,
you are missing out! Reading her posts about her husband
is such a great reminder to myself that I need to
treat Joe nicely. Joe loves it when I read a blog like
hers and I am all of a sudden super nice lol.

Amber has given me permission to embroider everyone's
name on this block, but I figured she knows much better
which tag her children will like the best, so I left
four tags without embroidery.




I made two blocks for her because she made two
blocks for me! It made me really happy
so I hope these two will make her happy too.

This block design was based on a house pattern
from a patchwork book from the library.
I modified the window's size (so that the most
adorable Santa designed by Monica would fit in perfectly)
and the chimney's size (so that the super cute cherry
designed by Lori would fit perfectly.)
Here Santa Clause is contemplating happy presents
for Amber's family. 'Hmm.. what would they want this year..?'




Yup Christmas is still three months away.
But we know it will come before we know it!

Oh speaking of Christmas, I will post a tutorial on
the utensil trays in a few weeks, because many people
asked for it! They would make great Christmas giftsfor friends who are setting up a new place, etc :)



Thank you for reading this! Have a great rest of the week :)

Echino Bag and Baby Booties

Thank you a million for your lovely comments on the
birds + a teeny quilt block!! You know it makes your
day when something you thought didn't turn out great
gets so much compliments. I love it when that happens :)

I would like to share some projects I sewed up for my friend today.
My friend is expecting a baby boy, and she has asked me
to make a diaper bag and booties for him a while back.
She wanted this bag to have strong and long handles
and a zipper closure on top. I picked up Echino fabric
from my local fabric store because the quality of this
linen blend fabric is absolutely perfect for bag projects.
There was a day where Tokyo was hit by a crazy typhoon
last week, so that gave me a great reason to stay home
and cross off one thing from my never-ending make-to list.






I came up with this bag pattern as I went. I would
make the outer bag, watch Kitchen Nightmare with Joe,
come back to made a lining, cook dinner, and come back
to sew up handles, etc. I didn't really make note of
anything about this pattern (measurements etc.) but
that was not the smartest decision, because I ended up
liking this bag a quite bit. I want to make one for myself too!




And these are booties for my friend's son-to-be!
She actually wanted booties to be matching with the bag,
but we both agreed that the Echino prints are a bit too
girly, so she let me use different fabrics for booties.
And ya, I know, the yellow ones aren't so boyish,
so I am thinking about making one more pair of aqua +
green booties for him and the yellow ones are to go to my shop.



The pattern is in a Japanese magazine, Cotton Time No.90.
It's not an easy and quick project, as it involves a lot
of hand-sewing, gathering, and sewing curves, but I think
the result pays off. Imagining my friend putting these
shoes on her first baby really got me excited!
I so wish I had my own ones to make baby stuff for (maybe
in a few years) Until then, I'll satisfy myself with
making baby things for my friends' babies. way to go!


I will be back with Christmas blocks in a few days!

Thank you for stopping by! Hope you are enjoying the
beginning of Fall/Spring! I definitely am! No more
sweating all the time :)

Block for the Partnership Quilt

Hi there! I wanted to post this little quick beforemy friend comes over for lunch today (yay)! Here is my block for the Partnership Quilt at the Tokyo International Quilt Festival. Remember I talked about it here? Maybe most of you have forgotten
about it since it's been a while. Totally understandable.I even almost forgot about it too, but finally pushedmyself to get working on it yesterday because the deadlineis literally around the corner (August 31st)! I am so happy I have it done now so I can pop it in the mail today!
This turned out a bit simpler than I had planned,but I am really happy that I squeezed inone of my favorite prints by Suzuko Koseki.
Have you looked at the blocks everyone has madefor the Partnership Quilt here? They are all incredible!I can't wait to look for them at the festival in January.
Have a lovely week everyone!

Pieced Cakes and Grocery Sacks

I joined a new virtual quilting bee called Patchwork 318: The Bee.
In this bee, we (six of us) create one block a month using
patterns in the Japanese book "318 Patchwork Patterns" by Kumiko
Fujita. (It is unfortunately out of print.) This is my month and I asked everyone to pick whatever block she likes from the book that is related to a Sweets shop. Kerry kicked off this month with this super cute Sweet shop, and Leila made a yum yum green tea ice cream cone. Charise is working on an ice cream truck with one of my
favorite fabrics ever! Knowing Tamiko and Amisha, I know
they will make ridiculously cute sweet blocks as well!
If you know me enough, you know I am already going nuts
picturing my small quilt made of six yummy
sweet blocks! I am already saving a nice spot for it in my
living room. I made three cake blocks - one of them will be chosen
based on consistency with blocks from everyone.


This is the first one I made. My favorite part of it is
the chickens helping me out to make sure I did add eggs.



After seeing Leila's green tea ice cream, I felt like
green tea, so this is supposed to be a cake with green
tea cream on top, but Joe thinks it looks more like a lime
cake. I am not crazy about lime cakes, so maybe this
will not join my final mini quilt. thanks Joe! lol


I was getting tired of limiting myself to pick out only
fabrics that will make a realistic cake, so this one was
made after I came to realization that it's only patchwork after all.A boy on a strawberry and high heel sandals in a cake are acceptable!



Let me share with you some reusable grocery bags I made
this week.



My local grocery stores have been very successful
at making customers switch from using disposable
plastic bags to bringing their own reusable
grocery bags. Impressively successful, I would say.
Every single grocery store in this town gives you
cash incentive if you bring your own bags. Either customers
with bags earn a cash discount at every transaction
or some extra points on threir member's cards. There is even
a store that charges for disposable plastic bags!
At a cash register, there is a "My Bag" card which
you can put in your basket to notify the cashier
that you don't need plastic bags. The first thing a
cashier does is to look for the card in the basket.
When she/he can't find it, you are asked if you sure
don't have your own bag. It makes you feel pretty guilty
to say "Yes" to that question. It's like you are no good.



So here is my solution, of course, a handmade grocery sack!
This grocery sack functions just like the plastic
bag from a super market except it's much prettier and stronger.
Oh I made handles a lot longer so that I can hang it from
my shoulder! I am so so so happy I finally made this!
With this bag in my purse, I will be able to
join a "good" bunch of customers who never need
plastic bags! Hehe, I can't wait to bring this
next time I go grocery shopping and feel 'proud!'




Here is another bag I made and it is listed
in my shop here :) Speaking of my shop,
there are more Japanese fabrics available in my shop :)




Hope you are having a great week!
P.S. Thank you Angela for featuring me as a part ofQuilting Around the world :)

Sew Cherry Love

So you all know this cutest fabric line, Sew Cherry
by a super talented textile designer Lori Holt by now,
right? When I first saw this line, which I believe was in
the pictures of Lori's booth at the Quilt Market a few months ago,
I almost passed out. I thought, "Gee why do I have
to find out about such pretty American fabric coming
out when I am about to move out of the States?!"
Lori was so super nice to surprise me with a package
full of her fabric, patterns, and other goodies
which arrived just a few days before my flight to Japan.
You know I went insane absolutely!



I can think of so many things to make with these fabrics,
but for now I want to focus on small projects using them
just so that I get to enjoy seeing the lovely stash
in my fabric shelf for quite some time. I made these cases
this morning to..




organize inside a drawer in my tiny kitchen.
But while shooting some pictures for this post,
I started feeling that maybe these should be
used like this for the dining table (which we don't
have yet; therefore, they are on the floor lol).



Wouldn't it be sort of a lovely way to have a silver set
on the table when your friends come over for lunch or so?
I hope my friends will say "Oh where did you buy these cases?!"




You'll see a lot of Sew Cherry in my projects! One
of them would be a curtain for my craft room.
(For now, we have craft paper covering the window. lol)

Sew Cherry can be found at lots of online fabric
stores, but Lori has a great list of the stores
in the right bar on her sweet blog :)


Here are some of my new listings in my etsy shop :)












I'll be out of town until next Tuesday, so all orders
placed by then will be sent out on Wednesday (17th).

Thank you so much for those of you who snatched
fabrics from my shop :)


Have a lovely weekend!