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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 shoppin

This is my terribly awfully late take on Amy 's theme "All things related to cameras" for the Ringo Pie bee. It's my very last block for the first round of the Ringo Pie bee ,  the first quilting bee I've ever joined! No need to be sad about though,  because we kicked off the second round this month! I just really love the concept  of this bee and the very friendly, encouraging and inspiring bunch of friends  in the bee. Making one block takes a lot of time and energy, but I like the  way this challenge stimulates my creative mind and helps me go beyond my comfort zone. For some reasons I was really intimidated to make this block.  My ideas for my block for her kept changing, but I ended up with this camera block  which is modeled after Diana F+ clone camera . Its retro look reminded me of Amy's style a lot ;) Obviously, the tape is not sewn. I just found the ribbon in my stash and had to take a picture with it because it looks like a camera strap! This humon

 Thank you for your lovely words about the juice and sprout blocks! Both Penny's sprout block tutorial and my juice glass block tutorial have been posted at Sew, Mama, Sew! .  Here is a block I made last night for Charise for her theme, 'baskets'  in Patchwork 318: The Bee . There is this really cute mermaid pattern in the book that I've always thought looks like Charise and I knew I'd somehow want to include the mermaid in the block for her. So when she asked for baskets, I immediately had this picture of the mermaid (= Charise) in a basket lol! I wasn't sure if that kind of  crazy stuff was right up her alley, but my stubborn mind was  insisting on the original idea. It took me a while to find the right solid for the skin. This one I used for the block was found in the section of "UV coated solids" at the store, so it basically means the mermaid Charise doesn't need any sun screen! That's cool!! I don't know if she is dancing or just s

Remember how I slightly hinted at a little project I was working on with my lovely friend Penny of sew take a hike? Well, here is a reveal! The kind folks at Sew, Mama, Sew contacted us a few weeks ago to ask if we'd be up for an interview about our Ringo Pie bee and for sharing paper-piecing tutorials on their blog! The interview is posted there today and our tutorials will be up on their blog tomorrow and Tuesday! It was so fun working with Penny (as always!) We had this idea of coming up with one pattern each and we both make a mini flimsy using  both our patterns. Penny made this adorable sprout pattern and I made the juice pattern. We both decided to go with making several pairs of sprout and juice blocks and use stamps to label them, but we wouldn't share each other's work until Sunday evening when our flimsy is complete. This way, we were able to put our own spins on the blocks. As usual, I was way too slow making progress. Penny was done with hers way before I ev

Yay it's March! I couldn't wait for March to come because  I'll be playing catch-ups with a bunch of things this month. I'm most definitely going to catch up with my two bees I fell behind terribly and I'm planning on some serious make-over for my craft room and  for my blog design. (I can't wait to show you my room filled with lovely lovely  handmade gifts from friends!) Hanging out with friends and Joe and a lot of gifts-making are happening too, not to mention I'll get to experience the spring in Japan first time in 9 years. Woohoo!  I made two blocks for Kerry for her Afternoon Tea theme for Patchwork 318 bee . I'm pretty happy with how this kettle turned out except for.. this unacceptably small seam allowance! This happens to me quite often.  As the block I am working on is about to finish, I start slacking off and just eye-ball to  make sure if pieces are large enough and I don't realize the lack of seam allowance until the very end. (Am I the

Hi all! So sorry for the longest absence ever on this blog!  I have been sewing a lot recently, but I don't have very many projects I can talk about at this moment! It's the time of the year with a lot of secret projects, right? Anyways, I am so glad to be back today with this block I made last night for Leila for Patchwork 318 bee . Leila chose "Home Sweet Home" as her theme in November. In this bee, we use Kumiko Fujita's Patchwork Pattern 318 book and our own stash  to create blocks. This block is sort of a combination of 4 block patterns in the book - a house pattern and three alphabet (ABC) patterns. I saw Kumiko Fujita's work just like this in a quilt magazine at the library and was so inspired to make one just like hers. Here is how it looks like with seam allowances. I remembered Leila mentioned she finds quilt inspiration in song lyrics here ,  so when I spotted the musical note symbol fabric in my stash,  I knew immediately it must be used for her b

Hope you are having a great weekend! It's a Sunday morning in Japan. I thought I would post this before we go on a long bike ride today. It's a scissors block for Amisha in the patchwork 318 bee . In this bee, we use block patterns in Kumiko Fujita's Patchwork 318 book (which is unfortunately completely out of print) and use our own fabric. I love this concept of this bee. Just the right amount of challenges ;) Not too hard but not too easy either. I know Amisha is a big fan of Kumiko Fujita and Suzuko Koseki, so I used a lot of fabrics designed by these two Japanese textile designers! The "Quilt Work America" fabric is my lucky find from auction. It's a very old Kumiko Fujita print.  As soon as I saw it, I knew I had to snatch it for my block for Amisha! Would you say it turned out too busy...? Keeping my fingers crossed Amisha will like it! Thanks for stopping by!  Enjoy the rest of the weekend ;)

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' use in the comments. I'll make a list of your ideas for the baskets and 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 using Kerry'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't like the fabric, but hopefully

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

August was Corey' s month in the Ringo Pie patchwork bee , and her theme was "Quilts on a line." I must admit that I struggled for a while. It is such a great theme, but I have never hung my quilt on a line once before, so it was a bit hard for me to be inspired by the theme. Totally my bad! So instead of hanging quilts from a line tied to trees, I decided to let birdies hold a quilt. Corey makes such lovely things with bird appliques/embroidery, so I figured she wouldn't mind welcoming a few more birds to her house ;) (have you seen this pillow she made? Unbelievably adorable!) Making these houses was the funnest part!! Each block is paper-pieced and is so teeny tiny (a 1 5/8" square). It was so much fun going through my stash to look for fabrics with teeny prints, and of course I squealed when I found the cute penguin of the perfect size! So these houses are supposed to be birdhouses. Those birdies are getting sick of their worn-out birdhouses, so they are pre