Made Gifts

Since Thanksgiving day was very close to the end of November and I was helping the costume sewing for the Nutcracker production of Nina's ballet school, it was so hard to manege the time for making Holiday gifts for the teachers and friends. We barely finished the gifts for Nina's ballet teachers by the last lessons. I also wanted to give some hand bags for my friends who have been really helpful for years. I couldn't make it by Christmas but I finished it just a couple of days ago and finally gave the bags to the friends.

For this one below, I used some remnants of Kimono fabrics from the bags I made for December consignment. This friend, the recipient of this gift told me she liked the fabric when she saw that. I made it with a kiss lock frame and a chain handle. Kimono silks are good enough for formal occasions.

The main fabric for the next one is a felted old Nordic sweater. Felting a sweater (it has to be made of  100% wool) is pretty simple. I wash a sweater with hot water and laundry detergent in my washing machine then dry in my dryer. I used a pair of leather handles and a aluminum tubular spring frame. The felted thick fabric and leather handles made this bag durable. It opens wide and has a large bottom gusset so this bag can hold a lot of things.

These women live sustainable lives enjoyably. They are very good at giving new lives to old things. The way how they live is a good example for people including myself who want to live greener without any pressure. Reusing old Kimono and sweaters is a perfect gift theme for them.

From here I am going to show the items Nina and I made together for her teachers. These two cosmetic pouches below are the gifts for Nina's ballet teachers. Nina did cross stitched their initials for the first time! I think they look great for the first time.

This one is for Nina's music teacher. She has a beautiful black cat so we made a tree ornament of a cute black kitten. Nina designed the face and I embroidered it on a piece of felt.

We are so glad that all the recipients were very happy!! Did you make handmade Holiday gifts? Thank you for reading. Please have a great Sunday!!

End of School Year

Hello! Finally, the school year is over. This winter was really long and cold here in Michiana. Our school had six snow days. That's exceptional. We rarely have more than three snow days usually. So we had three make up days through the Spring semester and even in June we had three more. That is why our Summer vacation started late this year. Yesterday was the last day of my daughter's third grade year. It has been pretty busy and messy around here as you may imagine. And you know, today is not just a first day of Summer vacation. It is the first day that Moms get busier and messier. Before my hair gets disheveled too much I would like to share things recently happened around my sweet girl.

She had a small piano recital. She played five songs. It wasn't perfect but she did pretty good. Surprisingly she never gets nervous before the events like this. Piano recitals, ballet performances, school talent shows, and so on. I guess that is a good thing, right? She could be something. Maybe....

She had worked hard on her school project in May. It was "Living History Museum". Every student pick one famous person in American history and research about the person. Then they present the result in front of parents and teachers pretending they are the persona they have in their reports. The picture below is Nina painting her background. I helped painting the green grass.

Her famous person in American history was BILLIE JEAN KING. I whipped up a skort from her old uniform shirt two days before the presentation. I needed to buy big framed glasses and deliver to Nina at school that day. I could not find an appropriate pair of fake glasses so I just grabbed a biggest pair of sunglasses from a store rack then ran to school. The glasses sorta look weird but she did great anyways.

Can you tell who is who? This was really a fun event and kids did very well. I think this was a very good way to learn history. Nina even remembers other students' persons' life histories. That is great.

Nina's 9th birthday was May 15th as I told you in this post . We usually have her birthday party right after school is over. But this year we had it the last weekend of school year due to the snow days make up. We had over twenty guests at St.Patrick's county park. This was the first time for us to have a party at park, and we liked it very much. St.Patrick's park is a beautiful place and very well maintained. We went skiing there many times this Winter and there are nice skiing (trekking) trails in the woods.

The second birthday cake was not home made. (You can see the first home made one here.)

It's cake time!

Mr.Tim challenged to the limbo. The cake wasn't home made but the limbo equipment was!!

The last weekend of May Nina's ballet school and company had the Sleeping Beauty ballet performances at DeBartolo performing arts center at Notre Dame University. I have been watching their productions for five years and this one was my most favorite. We are very fortunate to have such a good ballet school in the region. Nina is pretty much enthusiastic at ballet so far. I am not going to force her to keep going forever, but to be honest, I sometimes dream to see her dancing a main roll on stage someday. (I majored in dance and theater. After graduating college I worked as a dancer for a while. That made me a ballet Mom!)

Nina (and I) made a thank you gift for her teacher. A "stuffed teacher" is the thing we make occasionally. You can see the other stuffed teachers we made in the past here and here.

I attended the assembly to see Nina received some awards and celebrate that our school year was successful. I cannot believe that she is already going to be a forth grader next year. The parents her graders' started worrying and talking about which middle school we should apply for two years later. That is going to be a big decision.

I am glad we had another great year in school. We will enjoy the Summer in Michiana more than usual. Because we are not going to Japan to see my family. They will be coming here!! My Dad and sister's family will stay for about a week ( I know! It's too short! But it is really hard for my sister and brother in law to have a long vacation. ) We are looking forward to it. I always wanted to show them how I live in this country. It has been nine years. It was a long time.

 

Thank you so much for reading. I hope you started a wonderful Summer (or Winter in the South Hemisphere). Have a beautiful day!!

Last minute St.Valentine's day craft

Until a day before yesterday I have never been aware that St.Valentine's day is reaching that close! Nina needs to bring cards to school for all of her classmates (and her teacher). We always take something handmade every year. We do not have to, but you know, I always say "Hey, let's make something by hands! Just for fun!" I didn't have much time so quickly searched fun stuff on You Tube and I found this whimsical Origami Heart with Wings. They are much harder to make than the last ones, but it is not impossibly hard. (Nina made one. So you absolutely can make one!) I made one, then I sorta got addicted to it! Try it! They look awesome. \(^o^)/

Happy Valentine's Day Everyone!

Dress-up doll revival!

 None of the readers of this blog (my English blog) know what this doll is. If you are my Japanese blog reader from ancient time, there would be a very small chance that you remember this little girl. I made this doll for my daughter when she was only two years old (Wow, that was six years ago!). I expected that my girl would start playing dress-up dolls soon just like my sister and I did when we were little. And I thought I made this doll so adorable so she is going to be a very good friend of my daughter's for long time.

 Nina seemed to love this doll for a short while and even named that Amy. Then soon she failed to meet my expectation. I was pretty much disappointed, as you can imagine. Since then this little one had been sleeping in Nina's toy box like princess Aurora in the Sleeping Beauty.  Nina has never wanted to play with any dolls like Barbies and baby dolls. She loves stuffed animals but just cannot consider dolls made of plastic and rubber pretty. (Do they use rubber to make those dolls? Well, what ever they use.....) She says they are just spooky.

Look at this! Nina was such a little girl only six years ago! (You can find the post about this doll here.)

Lately, we had a chance to wake up the doll Amy. Nina was invited to a friend's sleepover birthday party and she was asked to bring a doll to play with. She still didn't want to take a plastic doll (actually she has some of them but they are hidden under the bed).  I thought of this homemade doll and Nina recalled she had that one for long time. She says this doll isn't spooky because this is not made of plastic. It is soft just like her stuffed animals. She even renamed it "Nina Jr.". She asked me if I could make a set of PJ's for the sleepover.

Nina drew the design of PJ's she wants.

I made patterns.

The hand sewn PJ's are finished!

Then finally Nina started enjoying to play a dress-up doll! She drew more designs she wants me to make. I love to work on a small scale so I enjoy making clothes for our new friend Nina Jr.

An everyday shirt and a pair of jeans.

A long, long dress.

Nina made a closet with an empty soy milk carton. Also invented tiny hangers made with straws and paper clips.

If you had a girl in Nina's age (she is eight), does she play dolls in a tiny corner of a huge room? We have plenty of empty space in our living room. And she likes to play in that little space only when she plays doll. Funny.

Merry Christmas to you all!

Merry Christmas everyone! It has been really long time since the last post. I wrote about Halloween in that post! That meas I have been silent for about seven weeks! I am so sorry about that but things around here got suddenly crazy busy after then. I usually spend very busy weeks around the Holidays like many of you do, but this one was extreme. I kept thinking of updating my blog and always ran out of strength at the end of a day. There were numbers of things that has occupied me so much. One of the reasons were that I had two commissions from the publishers in two different counties. The dead lines were close together in the middle of December. I am not going to describe about that, but this is a sneak peek for you of what I had been working on.

Today, I am going to share the pictures of the things I made on consignment for Christmas sales at Junk Evolution. These are folding zipper clutch bags. This pretty red and white lace fabric was from the dress I've found at a thrift store. The dress itself looked beautiful, clean and almost unworn. I washed and took apart that very carefully then made it into these pretty bags.

These are crocheted jewelries. Some colorful earrings and pins.

My standard goods, crocheted flower brooches.

I started making these felt pins last Winter. A building and a tree series.

From here, these are Christmas gifts Nina made for her teachers. The mini heart pillow with embroidered letters. This was for her ballet teacher.

The canvas book tote made with "original textile" . Nina drew the picture with fabric crayons and markers.

This was not a gift. She built this ginger bread house almost all by herself for the first time! Now I consider her a real big girl ;D

This is the book tree I saw at the library in the town. I think it's very chic and cool. Maybe, I could make a small version of this for my house next year.

It's literally freezing here in South Bend tonight. We don't have much snow but this is a beautiful Christmas eve night. I hope you are having a merry merry Christmas with your loved ones.

( I promise the next post will be coming sooner! I have a lot to share with you!!)