chick chick sewing

Baby bib and a softie gift set

I love making handmade gifts, and I especially love making gifts for the baby.

Recently, I whipped up this baby gift set for our friend's baby girl. It's a matching set of baby bib and a bunny softie...

The reverse side of the bib is made of soft and comfy double gauze fabric, which I think is a perfect fabric for the baby :)

The small ribbon on the bib front is hand embroidered on linen.

I'm truly happy with how this gift set turned out, EXCEPT for this bunny guy...

I mean, he (or she?) may be cute, but does it really look like a bunny to you?

Well, to me, it looks more like a badly made Totoro than a bunny... Awww!

For those of you who are not familiar with Totoro, he is one of the magical creatures featured in the Japanese animated film My Neighbor Totoro. Our girls and I liked this movie so much that I remember watching it over and over when our girls were younger...

Whether the softy looks more like Totoro or a bunny, I shall let the recipient and her mommy and daddy decide (lol)!

So...what do you think? ^^

Handmade Rilakkuma tote bag for my daughter

Hello all! Hope you're enjoying the beautiful month of May.

I had been quite busy lately, both at work and home, but I still managed to create handmade things for the people who I care...because that's what I enjoy doing the most!

Anyways, here's the tote bag that I made for my oldest daughter, who is twelve years old. As always, my daughter selected the fabrics from my stash in a picky manner :P This one is a Rilakkuma fabric (Japanese lazy bear character) from Japan.

We are a bilingual family and our girls go to the Japanese language school on every Saturdays. This tote bag was specifically made for my girl to carry her textbooks, notebooks, pens, pencils, etc., to her Japanese school.

The lining of the bag is pink... as we all know by now (lol). She wanted a large inside pocket to hold her valuables...

Here she put her textbooks inside the bag.

And of course, she has to hang this large and puffy Rilakkuma bear and other dangly things to the bag handles...

It seems to me that the hanging bear may be a bit too big for the bag... but that's okay, as long as my girls is happy :D

Thanks for visiting my blog and I look forward to post again soon :)

***Love, Amy***

Sewing birthday gifts for the tween girls

As you may already know, I have two *tween* girls, ages twelve and ten.

Besides making handmade items for my girls, I also enjoy making handmade birthday gifts to their friends.

This is a ribbon pouch that I made recently for a ten year old girl. Per request of my daughter, I (overly) decorated this one by attaching a detachable ribbon to the pouch front and clear dangly stars at the zipper pull.

Lining of the pouch is pink... of course! (lol)

We bought a couple of cute pencils and an eraser to go with the pouch and wrapped them altogether in a plastic cello bag. The gift is now ready to be delivered :)

This one is another birthday gift that I made for a tween girl who likes Rilakkuma (the lazy bear character from Japan).

Once again, I followed this this fun and crafter-friendly tutorial by Pink Penguin to make this bag.

The reversible side of the bag is brown x white polka dots cotton prints.

Here, we placed more Rilakkuma goodies inside the matching handmade bag.

According to my daughter, the birthday girl seemed to like our gift set which made all of us happy :)

You see, tween girls can be a bit difficult to deal with at times (and I'm speaking about our tweens in our house :P) but sewing gifts for them is so rewarding and fun!

Handmade tennis racket bag for my daughter

Recently, our ten year old girl began taking tennis lessons with her friend so we got her a new junior size tennis racket.

It didn't come with a case, so what does a penny-saving-DIY-mom do???

Yes! I decided to make one for her :D

As I've mentioned in this blog a number of times, our girls are super picky with their fabric choices (and guess where they got it from? lol), so I had my daughter select fabrics for her racket bag.

The exterior fabric (in pink peace sign) is home decor weight heavy cotton. For the lining, soft fleece is used to protect the racket. Batting was not necessary with this fabric combination.

The racket fits perfectly inside this "custom ordered" racket bag.

The racket bag is finished and our daughter is off to the court!

But wait, I shall make another bag for her friend now :D

Hope my girl enjoys playing tennis with her new racket protected in her mom's handmade racket bag :)

Stamp carving fun!

Hello all :)

Today I'd like to show you some of the eraser stamps that I carved recently.

I designed my own motifs for these stamps. They are an apple, a pear, a coffee cup with a saucer, and a square with a ribbon inside...

Here I used my stamp for packaging my shop item.

I love stamp carving because it's fun and rewarding! Just like sewing and crocheting, I lose concept of time when I'm carving these little ones ;)

Thanks for visiting and happy stamp carving!

What is your favorite pincushion?

This is one of my favorite pincushions.

It's my handmade flower shaped pincushion that is filled with a mixture of poly fill and wool roving to prevent needles from rusting.

I like to place it in a cup like this to make it handy and user friendly :)

Most of my pins were getting bent from heavy and poor usage by me :( so I replaced them with the new ones. I like to use thin needles with glass heads.

But when I found these pins at our local Joann's notions wall, they were too cute to resist!!

It's so apparent that the heart pin to the left are too thick and I don't prefer thick pins...

But they go perfectly with my tiny pincushion with crocheted flower so that's okay ;)

So what is your favorite pincushion?

Chopsticks and cutlery holders in my shop

Can you tell what these are?

These are traditional Japanese style chopstick holders, made with zakka taste. These are eco-friendly and easy to use items that are now listed in my shop.

These holders can hold not only the chopsticks, but also forks and spoons, to help cut back on the use of those disposable chopsticks and plastic cutlery out there.

My hubby brings bento (lunch box) to work everyday, and he brings his own chopsticks to work with this holder. Can you see the hopping bunny guy in his chopstick holder above?

Well, a hopping bunny may be too cute for a middle aged Japanese man... But that's okay, because he doesn't even notice about the bunny even after using it for a few weeks now! lol!

Anyways, the design of these holders are very unique. As you can see from the photo, one side of the holder is left open to fit chopsticks/cutlery of various lengths.

In the image, a standard size chopsticks of 9 inches (22.5 cm) long are shown.

It works like this. The chopsticks/cutlery are placed inside the pocket (left end of the triangle above), then the opposite side (right end of the triangle) is folded inward.

Then the holder is rolled up tightly and the cords are wrapped around.

Finally, tuck the cute embellished ball under the cords. Then it's ready to go!

The back side of the holder looks like this.

The embellished ball is sewn at the cord ends. It is filled with small amount of poly fill.

I designed the case slightly oversized to hold longer chopsticks, cutlery, crochet hooks, knitting needles, or any item up to 12" (30 cm) long. It can carry several chopsticks at once, too.

So even if you have a bigger family, you can still carry chopsticks/cutlery for everyone in your family. Here, I placed 6 pairs of chopsticks (or 12 chopsticks) inside and rolled it up easily.

Here are some close up images of my other chopstick/cutlery holders that are made with different fabrics.

This is a cute one made with pink gingham check x light blue floral prints.

This one is a combination of Kasse Fasset and linen.

Here is my another favorite. Japanese imported purple butterfly fabric x gingham check in light purple.

So let's go green and carry our own chopstick/cutlery to work and school :)

Thanks for visiting!

***Love, Amy***

Crocheted potholder with fabric strip yarn

I recently crocheted a potholder using fabric strip yarn.

You may recall that I've made a couple of crocheted kitchen mats using upcycled fabric strips before, such as this one shown below.

When cotton fabric strips are crocheted into mats with large hooks (I used size P or 11.50 mm hook), they create a sturdy, thick rug that is perfect for heavy use (e.g. our kitchen).

So this time, I crocheted something smaller than the kitchen mat.

A potholder using fabric yarns.