Happy Holidays!

I received the toadstool ornament from Johanna as a gift a couple of weeks ago for babysitting her panda bear. Then my friend J. gave me a wonderful book for my birthday with super great crafting ideas inside.
When I saw the gold plated cones I got myself all the supplies the very next day. What a messy thing to do but I just love my golden cones and I think the look lovely with the toadstool ornament and the red ribbon.

A Whimsy Jar!

My first actually. I've seen quite a few on flickr before and really liked how the looked. I think that is a super special way to pack your gifts. I like the fact that there is no trash involved and that you can use the packing again and again for lots of different things.And you know what I like about it too? You get to store all the little gifts together until it is time to give them away. Unless you forget where you store the jar you won't be searching for all the tiny gifts you bought along the way. Oh, I think it's just neat!I made this one for a swap on swap-bot but it certainly will not have been my last! Decorating alone is so much fun. I might need to keep a few just for me... you can never have enough jars in your house to store all the bits and bobs, can you?

Pillow Talk!

I love the Doris Day movie (but I love all Doris Day movies). Just so you know.I have been sewing some pillow during the last couple of days. The first one for Johanna who bought the fabric for it ages ago and actually had already forgotten about it, so that was a nice surprise (or maybe a bit embarrassing... depending on how you look at it).I also made some for the shop. I won't be too sad though should these not get sold, cause I really really like them a lot. I think these two would look good in our bedroom or our living room.I don't have a place for the one with the cherries yet, but hopefully that will change someday.Can you imagine my Happy Mushroom was on the front page of Etsy? Me neither. When I saw how many people had looked at it I thought there was a mistake at first, but then I found out about the treasury list. Whoa, exiting! If you want to have a look at it you can see it here on curiosity killed the cat. (Thank you so much for adding me!)Edited: I wasn't too happy with the first pics I took of the pillows so Hanna and I had a little photo shoot in her kitchen. Thank you so much, Hanna. I think it was worth it. Your kitchen is perfect!

Mass Production!

A friend asked me to sew a couple of lavender sachets for her. She provided the fabric (which I coincidentally own too). I don't think I have ever made so many identical things before... and it wasn't as bad as I expected. I actually like how the end result looks. That's why I decided to make some for my shop as well.

Is this shabby chic?

I don't really have a clue. But still this was inspired by one of my favorite Japanese crafting magazines "Café Special Vol. 2, Linen & Cotton" and Hannah's description "Think French shabby chic - cabbage roses, polka dots, stripes, duck-egg blues, light pinks etc.". When I saw the rose fabric at Charlotta's I had to have it. Not just for the coasters but because I found it irresistible - and I'm not usually a big fan of rose fabrics. This is different. Obviously a few other people thought so too, because it's already gone. Too bad I didn't buy more of this gorgeous Lecien fabric! Now I will be really stingy with the rest of it.
I just hope Hannah will get close to being as happy with this as I am with the lovely goodies she sent.

My new love!

I don't know how long it will last. Maybe it will be just a short affair. Right now though I'm madly in love with almost anything kawaii but especially these little guys:
Happy little mushrooms. In this case filled with lavender to make someone's closet smell nice and to keep moths away.

A while back Torrance had a post on her blog with some of her favorite things. I really like posts of that sort and I think I'll do something like that soon too. The little mushroom definitely puts a smile on my face and there are so many more "things" that will do so as well!

ETA: The felt I used is Rainbow Classicfelt from the Kunin Group. I love this stuff. I think it's a very good quality, you can machine wash and dry it, it's fade resistant and it's made with ecospun (100% post-consumer recycled plastic bottles). Pretty cool, huh? In Germany you can get lots of colors here.

Change of plans!

I couldn't bake the cookies I had planned, because I forgot to buy some more margarine. So instead I decided to make some Rumnog Pecan Cookies from VEGANOMICON (except I used walnuts and I also made some changes to the frosting). They are incredibly yummy and also very photogenic! Here one of them is modeling my last minute sewing: coasters for my grandmother.
Of course C's grandmother has to get some coasters too. Red with rose hips tags.I think I'm all set now. I just need to wrap some gifts and maybe I'll make some sugar cookies tomorrow...

Keeping it short!*

Sewing hearts until you run out of cedar wood chips...Waiting impatiently for the mailman so you can continue stuffing hearts, while you know exactly that you should be doing something else anyway!

* "God Jul" fits so much better onto these hearts like for example "Fröhliche Weihnachten"!

Let it snow!

(Well, maybe not today, but after the 17th when I will be done with my exams for this year.)
I sent out two swap packages on Monday, one to the US and one to Italy. I hope the one to Italy will reach my pal within this week and I hope my US package will make the deadline which is 12/31. The woman at the post office couldn't tell me how long it will take. I will check on the internet, but just to make sure something will reach my pal in the US on time I'm also sending out a letter with these two coasters and a little knitting related surprise.
I bought the mistletoe trim just a week ago when I saw it in a store and just had to have it, even though it was kind of very expensive. I bought only one metre of it, not knowing what I wanted to do with it until I came across some coasters in one of my Japanese magazines. Could it be put to any better use? I don't think so. Using the trim this way means I only need a tiny piece of it for each coaster. Now I think there's enough of it left for quite a few more...
Btw: See my little piggy? So I put up some decoration here too now.

Enjoying fall!

The weather is fantastic these days. I'm truly enjoying the outdoors! We went for a long walk in the woods with our dogs. I took lots of pictures while trying to keep up with my parent's pace.


When I'm not outside and not studying, I try to get as much off my to-do-list as possible. Today I did some applique on these two shirts:

I really hope the two girls have not outgrown them already since the shirts were purchased/given to me months (!) ago.

Roar!

This is actually my second try on completing a pillow case for a friend's son. I was almost finished with the first, when I suddenly didn't like it anymore.
What I really did like though is the fabric combination of my last bag and while sewing it I suddenly knew that I wanted to use the same for the pillow case.

I finally got to make a freezer paper stencil. I wanted to try that for ages. I've seen those on various blogs months ago and ordered some Freezer Paper right away (in Germany you can order it here. It's quite expensive, but I think it will last a long time. If you do have other sources or if there is actually something similar available in stores around here please share!).

I wanted to add a dinosaur, so I googled for a silhouette, printed it out and (using my window as a light box) traced it onto the freezer paper. I then followed the tutorial of angry chicken.
It's really fairly simple and the hardest part for me was to let the fabric paint dry.
Now I don't think you can see it too well in the picture, but the outlines of the dinosaur came out very clear and exact. So yay for freezer paper stencils!

edited to add:
Now it's all ready to go. See the little tag up there?

I made it using my new rubber stamp from Sweet Papery! I first saw them here on creative little daisy's blog (she always makes great discoveries!). Now go, get some for yourself... they make great gifts, too!

Hourglass Pillow!

When I was sewing the skirt yesterday, I messed up while cutting the fabric. I didn't realize at first that it wasn't pure cotton but also partly synthetic, which made it a bit elastic. Therefore the direction to put on the pattern mattered. Of course I had already cut out one piece before I noticed that. It's really stupid, because if I hadn't made this mistake I would have probably been able to make two skirts out of the fabric, but since I had already thought about making a pillow with the berry fabric I decided to use that piece for that and will still have some left for other small projects.
I used the Amy Butler pattern for an hourglass pillow which can be downloaded here. It's a great pattern but I think that the instructions are a bit detailed. The pillow is so easy to make and the instruction scare you of at first - at least that's what they did to me. Anyway, I like how the pillow looks and I got to make fabric covered buttons, something I wanted to do for a long time.

Next up: the kerchiefs I've be planning to do now for quite a while and another skirt...

Did you notice? I can add a link - and a nice one, too! (Okay, alright, everybody can do that.)

Look at that!

My sweet friend, who is the best shopping assistant in the world, is also the best decorator in the world. What a coincidence! Above you can see an example of what her kitchen table looks like today. I had given her a couple of cedar chips filled hearts and she keeps arranging them in lots of different ways. (Btw: All of the flowers are from her own garden!)

Now I feel bad about what my home looks like and before sewing there will have to be some cleaning.

Copy cat!

After last weeks "disaster" I actually did no sewing at all. All I did was eating chocolate (I'm quite good at that!). Until today I didn't feel like sewing at all. Well, maybe I felt like looking at a completed project, but I couldn't get myself to get started. Instead I looked at all my favorite blogs and admired the beautiful things I found. shim + sons had this gorgeous baby onesies and I totally fell for those. So when I was at a H&M the other day, I bought a couple of shirts and today I finally made something!
At first I had to - in some way - copy the ones I saw on shim+sons. I didn't dare to only stitch round the pears by hand so instead I used my sewing machine.
After I finished the pears I remembered a very cute design of a bird I'd seen in a Japanese magazine. The idea with the little heart is also not my own. I don't remember where it's from though. I usually just draw things I really like into my little notebook without writing down where it's from. So, I'm really sorry, if I didn't give someone credit who came up with great idea originally!

Problems!

I am trying to make a little diaper clutch and it doesn't look like it's supposed to! So now I'm all grumbly and very annoyed. I really wanted it to work out. I made up the pattern myself - nothing fancy or complicated looking, but I knew from the start that there would be a problem. I checked in a sewing book with a similar pattern before I started, but there they didn't mention any difficulties. I don't really know what went wrong and I don't know how to fix it - all I know is that I don't feel like starting all over again (at least not right now), but at the same time I really want to get it done! Now what?! Maybe something else? Something small and easy... Yes, I guess that's what I need now. And maybe some chocolate...

(I won't make another heart, because eventhough I really really like them a lot, I think I got enough of those right now. How about another strawberry? You can't have enough of those, can you?)

Strawberry!

Ages ago I saw a strawberry pincushion on another blog (I don't remember which one). It had a link to the pattern. (I am noticing just now that I need to check out how to put a link here!) I wanted to make one right away, but I had no emery and so I forgot all about it. Then just a couple of weeks ago I found a pattern for a scented fabric strawberry in "Tildas hus", a Norwegian sewing book. There were lots of other nice things in it, too and therefore I bought it. Of course the strawberry is the first thing I made. I'm not sure if I got all the instructions right, but I like how it came out anyway.

Oh, and this is a glimpse of something top secret! I'll show "it" in a couple of weeks.

I just realized that in fact I actually do seem to like red more than I thought. I was all wrong when I said I don't feel drawn to red fabric because there is lots of it in my stash!

Hearts!

I've been making quite a few of these... I think I can't count them anymore! They are filled with cedar chips and cloves. Because of that they are supposed to keep moths away. Actually I don't care if they really do - they smell good and make the perfect decoration for any room. By making these little things I can finally use up some of all those scraps I've been collecting and which filled up a whole bag by now...