My sewing machine

Today, I want to introduce to you my sewing buddy, Brother sewing machine. This baby just came back from the service recently, and it's in a perrrrrfect condition and I'm loving it!   After the tune-up and cleaning, it's so much quieter and a lot smoother.   I now think that it was worth the wait and the money I paid for the maintenance.   I love you, baby!!

I handmade this sewing machine cover shown above some time ago, by lightly following this tutorial .  I love hexagon patchworks so I attached one to the cover ; )

And this is my Brother machine.  She does all sorts of general sewing with many many stitch functions and it also does simple machine embroidery.

Can you see the floral prints on both sides of the machine's monitor?  No, it didn't come like this originally, I simply used double sided tape to attach my favorite Liberty floral prints on to the face of the machine! 

It used to look like this when I first bought it (Mickey mouse with Disney logo).  See, our girls loved Disney characters when I purchased this machine a few years ago, but they eventually got over with them : (   I used to embroider their favorite Disney princesses on their clothings and bags often back then!

Also, I wanted to share with you about the tips on thread choices that I was informed by our local sewing machine shop.   According to the shop person, many of their customers' sewing machine problems (jamming, snagging, rough stitches, etc.) are a mere result of bad thread choices, and many of such problems can be avoided just by selecting the good quality threads. 

According to her, the worst type of threads are the cotton-wrapped polyester threads (e.g., Dual Duty brands), which can result in jamming, knotting, breaking, snagging and even flimsy finish.  (And these are the threads that I had been using for the past few years, which indeed resulted in threading problems of my machine). 

On the other hand, the best quality threads are the Mettler threads (both polyester and cotton threads).  

When I sew,  I guess I was paying too much attention to the fabric choices and I never really cared about the thread quality, so these suggestions were very surprising to me!! 

And before I go, let me show you the closeup of the hexagon patchwork that I sewed using the blanket stitch function of my sewing machine.

Happy sewing and hope you have a great weekend!

Fabric journal covers

My latest projects: fabric journal covers.   Actually, the patchwork journal cover on the far left of this upper photo (the one with linen + flower + dots) is made by me a few weeks ago which was posted on this post, so this week I made the remaining two covers.  

I will be donating all of these journal covers to the Write It Out Project, organized by a wonderful lady, Alida L.   She is organizing this Project for those who lost their husbands at war... She is collecting handmade journals for the grieving military widows, and she even posted on her blog an easy-to-follow tutorial on how to make the journal covers.   According to Alida, journal writing help the grieving souls in the difficult times...   Please go and check out her post if you are interested.  Her story is very touching.

On the other hand I wanted to show you what we received in our mail today!  This was a surprise gift from my dear blog friend, Sam of Sunnysidey, and it was not for me, but for my ten year old daughter Lisa, who just picked up embroidery recently and enjoys it with great pride... 

The gift is a glow-in-the-dark embroidery threads that Lisa wanted ever since we saw them on Sam's beautiful embroidery work  recently.  Thank you so much, Sam, for your kindness and generousity.  You won't believe how our young embroiderer was delighted to receive such a wonderful gift!!! 

And these glow-in-the-dark threads REALLY glows in the dark!!  WOW!!

Happy Girls' Day

March 3rd is the Girls' Day, or Doll Festival, in Japan.  We have two girls in our household, and every year we celebrate the Girls' Day by displaying few of the traditional Japanese dolls in our house, along with many of the handmade ones made by our girls :)   And this is how one corner of our living room looks like right now.  As you can see, each doll set comes with the Emperor and the Empress.

Besides displaying traditional dolls,  we plan to have some simple sushi, drink clam soup, and have some sweet cakes for dessert for the Girls' day dinner.

Here are some of the close ups of our doll sets.

And these are the handmade ones (mostly made by our girls several years ago while they were still in preschool)

Happy Girls Day to all of the girls out there : )

Little pouch with French fabric

I think I've made a quite number of pouches recently, but I normally give them away as gifts, so this time I decided to whip up a simple pouch for myself.

I used natural linen +  blue French country prints, from the "Souleiado" brand that I got in Japan.   Souleiado is a French fabric, made in Provence, southern France.   Their prints are simple yet elegant, and they are very popular in Japan, just like the Liberty of London fabrics from England.   

However, unfortunately,  Souleiado fabrics are not sold here in the U.S. (at least in my area), so this piece of fabric was very precious to me... and so I didn't have enough courage to cut it for a while!

Lining is navy x white polka dots

I placed a matching tag on the side.

 Side view

It can hold many many crochet hooks, pencils, pens, and other small necessities in my bag.

Now I'm thinking that maybe I should of made this pouch a little bigger in size... Oh well, maybe next time. Yet I really like the simplicity of this pouch.

Round fabric baskets

Using my fabric scraps, I made these round patchwork fabric baskets.   These baskets are pretty tall, measuring approxoimately 9.5 inches or 24 cm in height.

To give you a better idea of its size, I placed a 500 ml / 1 pt 0.95 fl oz. water bottle in between the baskets.

Back view

The bottom is round... which was a bit tricky to sew.

The lining is pink/white and purple/white poodle fabrics from Japan (although this baskets are reversible).

Inside is quite deep

And what do I plan to do with these round baskets?  I will hung them in the back seats of our car, next to the hanging tissue box cover that I sewed recently.   Yes, I will use these fabric baskets as trash bins in the car, lined with the plastic bags that we get from our local supermarkets.

Hopefully, our kids will keep our car clean and uncluttered with this... at least for a while!

Hanging tissue box covers

Here are my latest sewing projects - hanging tissue box covers.   The fabric used here are pink and white poodle prints from Japan.   The tissue box cover has drawstring opening, which is easy to use as much as easy to make.   These covers  fit the taller tissue boxes that we use in our household  (4 inches or 10 cm tall ).

Side view

I plan to hung these tissue boxes like this in the back seats of our minivan.   I got this idea of hanging the tissue box in the car's back seat from my dear blog friend, cocostitch's etsy shop.   Thank you, cocostitch, for the great idea! 

 And this is how the tissue box normally looks like in the back seats of our car... This poor little thing is stepped on and sat on and even kicked by our girls, especially when it's left on the back seats' floor.  I hope the hanging tissue box cover will stop the tissue box abuse by our kids!

Pink girly pencil case

One of our girls' close friends has been hospitalized for the past week.  We've been hoping that she get well soon.  Along with the get well soon card that my girls and I wrote together, I made this pencil case as a gift to her.  

I used the pink girly Japanese fabric, which I thought would suit her sweet image.   The pencil case will hold many many pens and pencils.  Inside the pencil case, we put some markers, pencils and eraser.

Lining is light blue

Hope she likes the gift, and more than anything else, we hope that she get well soon!

Two drawstring bags

Yay! My sewing machine is finally back from service today, and I quickly made two drawstring bags late this afternoon.  Both bags are based on  Pink Penguin's very helpful drawstring bag tutorial and both will be gifts to our family and friends.

The embroidery work of this drawstring bag is done by my 10 year old daughter Lisa.  After finishing her first embroidery piece, she seems to be hooked on embroidering, although she still has hard time threading embroidery flosses into needles...  The word "Obambi" embroidered here is a nickname of her grandma in Japan.    And yes, this bag will be a gift from Lisa to her grandma.  

Well, besides the embroidery work, I did all the sewing, but it sure was fun selecting fabrics together with my daughter for my mom :)  

Inside is white hearts (the bag is reversible)

I used fun apple fabric for the second drawstring bag.  I plan to put these handmade bibs that I made earlier inside this apple bag and give it to my girlfriend for the upcoming babyshower gifts.

Light blue x brown polka dots lining (reversible bag)

  

Lastly, here is Lisa's latest embroidery work...  I thought it was so sweet for her to embroider something like this...!!!  Which sure made me happy :-)  Now, we're trying to decide what to make from this project... Shall we make another drawstring bag? a pillow? or an apron, maybe??  We'll see.

Bibs for the baby

My girlfriend's baby shower is coming up, and I made two tiny bibs for the new baby to come.   We don't have a baby in our house, so I borrowed my daughter's build-a-bear to be the model to wear these bibs today :)

The light blue x white gingham/polka dot bib is made by my sewing machine previously, and I added a simple hand embroidery work to the pocket part.

Here are the close up

The bib opens by a snap button.

My girlfriend has lived in Hawaii before, so I thought Aloha bib will be another good choice for her baby.  And this one is stitched by hand only.

 Soft and plush minky fabric are used for the back side of both bibs.

For embroidering, I used these embroidery threads called "LETO" that I purchased online recently from Clover-USA. I think in Japan, these LETO threads are sold under the MOCO brand name and are very popular over there. Just FYI, these threads are on close-out sale right now, and it's only USD $5.00 for 20 packs of LETO threads assortments (each thread measures 10 m or 10.9 yards). They come with dark and light color assortments and  I think it's really good value for this price.

Hope the new mom likes these bibs!

Quick gift to my friend

Few weeks ago I made this small pouch to my friend.  She is the mother of my kids' friends, and I had always wanted to make a small  thank you gift to her for being nice to our family. 

It took me about an hour to whip this up, and I was so glad because she seemed to like it.  I somehow managed to take these pictures at our kitchen table that afternoon (sorry for the not so good images).

I think that one of the best things about learning how to sew is that once you've mastered to make a quick project, gift giving becomes so much easier.  Before I knew how to sew (which wasn't so long ago), hitting the local mall was the only way for me to find a gift to someone!  Sewing saves a lot of time... and money, too, I think.

Lining is brown/white polka dots

Love stamps and more

Today was Valentine's day, and I carved some "love" related eraser stamps to express my love to you all...

I personally like the rabbit stamp, which may not have anything to do with Valentine's day... but I guess that's okay, becuase she's lovely :)

It took me about an hour or two to carve these stamps. Hope you had a happy Valnetine's day!