Unique felt brooches

I made some unique felt brooches for my Etsy shop. "House and tree" brooches and flower brooches.

I have been enjoying making various houses with different types of trees, and little heart warming scenes. I hope someone will consider these will make very nice Holiday gifts.

A tall house and a tall Christmas tree.

A house with a red door has snow on its roof. 

 A red barn and an apple tree.

 I added a couple of flower brooches in the shop too. You can get felt sheets in many colors. As I said so many times, it is always fun to play with colors.

These are all available at my Etsy store Harujion Design. And you can see more images of these items in my Flickr pool. Happy felt crafting and Holiday gift shopping (under $30!) !!!

Velvet clutches / a bit about fabric manipulation

I have been playing with fabric manipulating technique these weeks. I made a few clutch bags with beautiful velvet which I kept in my stash for years.They are now for sale at my favorite store Junk Evolution in downtown South Bend.

This technique above is one of common smocking stitches called Honeycomb stitch.

On this one, I did some pleating.

This one is also one of smocking technique. This kind of smocking which makes chunky folds on surface is particularly called North American smocking or Canadian smocking. You might have seen those on vintage decorative pillows.

These techniques probably look hard to do, But actually not. Complex effect with pretty simple work. It is such a great execution.

I also featured vintage jewelries in these pieces. These rhinestone pins gave me a hint of a new idea. Adding a large bow on the top of the purse.

This sunflower jewelry was a piece of earring. I remake it into a brooch. I matched the zipper color with the center of the flower. Purple and brown was not a famous color scheme. I am amazed to find those two colors go along well pretty much.

This one has a silver brooch of two lovely flowers. It is fun to find a good combination of different materials in one work.

Thank you for reading. Hope you had a good veterans' day weekend as we did. Happy fabric manipulation! 


***These items are currently not in my Etsy shop. If you are interested in purchasing one of them, please email me to [harujiondesign at gmail dot com]. I will send you back more information about the product.

Double Gauze Tunic Dress

I found this lovely flower pattern double gauze fabric this Summer when I was in Japan. I thought this would be great for sewing any kind of tops for myself. It is light and soft and feels so comfortable to my skin. The fabric was resting in my inventory shelf for awhile and eventually I pulled that out and sewed a tunic dress.

Unfortunately there wasn't enough yardage to make a whole dress with the double gauze. So I added a fine European linen to the bottom of the dress. And fortunately the colors of the linen and the gauze were getting along very well with each other :D

The pattern I used didn't have a facing around the neck. It was instructed to use a bias tape. I wanted a well tailored look rather than something like a "home made" look, so I modified the pattern a bit by myself.

You can find this free pattern here. This pattern is provided by a craft supply chain store in Japan. So it is written in Japanese. But it has intelligible illustrations so if you are experienced sewer, you probably would be able to understand the pattern.

I placed little pearl buttons to the neck opening.

The finished dress looks very pretty in the picture. But actually I think the volume of the skirt is just a bit too much. I am thinking if I should redo the skirt, or go on to modify the pattern and make another one. Otherwise, I am very happy about the result. Now, I got to want buying more beautiful double gauze fabric. To make more clothes for myself and for my daughter as well.

Thank you for reading. Hope you have a good Wednesday. Happy sewing!

Wool Challenge @ Patchwork Posse

One day, I got email from Becky of Patchwork Posse and I was invited to her "Wool Challenge" on her blog as a guest designer. Becky offers a couple of free patterns and tutorials using wool and you can participate the wool challenge photo contest. And also there will be a giveaway. And a lot more interesting tips and ideas. What a fun and exciting event it is!

Becky will introduce six designers who are very talented wool enthusiasts. Her interviews with designers are scheduled for every Monday. And to my honor, I was interviewed and will be a featured designer tomorrow! There will be pictures of my work with wool and a bit of story of myself. I will share some ideas of projects using wool and my favorite blogs and websites which will give you inspirations about using wool in your projects. Please jump over to Patchwork Posse and check the infos of Wool Challenge. If you are wool enthusiasts, enter the contest! And don't forget to check my interview tomorrow, too!

I bet you will enjoy all the things going on there at Wool Challenge. Thank you Becky, for giving me a chance to share my works and tips with everyone! Hope you all have a good start of week!

Halloween 2012

I am really hoping all of you didn't get injured or damaged by Sandy. And also hope that the people in the devastated area will be able to get back to their ordinary life soon. It was scary that even here in Northern Indiana was affected by Sandy. We had a bad stormy day and night. I could tell how big and strong the hurricane was. I can easily imagine that must have been a nightmare for those people live in the area.

Our Halloween was still raining and drizzling here. But we could never stop kids who have been burning to go out for trick or treating. Fortunately the time we were loitering around wasn't very wet. We went to the area where many beautiful old houses are standing in rows. It is also a very popular place for trick or treating. This year, finally Nina took a pretty big part of preparing her costume. She was a good wizard. Only things I needed to do were altering the night gown (It was a Christmas gift from someone and has been hanged in the closet for a couple years) and put an elastic tape and ribbons on her hat and wand. Otherwise, Nina made the hat and wand by herself. Well, this was a pretty simple costume, though. I kinda loved this No-hassle costume Halloween.

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Probably its hard to tell in the photo, but I was amazed how she constructed the 3D star shape from a piece of paper. Never sell seven -year-olds short. They are such great inventors.

Scaring citizens and collecting treats with good friends. We enjoyed the view of nicely decorated pretty houses.

A giant kitten watching little monsters' behavior.

Those monsters were polite enough to wait in the line for their turn.

Stopped at a good friend's house to say "Trick or treat" to Cooper the doggie.

This is the Halloween box lunch I fixed for Nina. The ghost is made of white rice and a seaweed seat.

When Nina got home from school I asked her if she could tell what shape this apple was meant. She said "an Apple?" OF COURSE, I meant it to be a PUMPKIN, my sweetheart!

I cannot believe she's gotten so big! I remember clearly when she was one year old, her back in a little ladybug costume giving some treats away to the visitors at our front door. It is one very sweet memory of mine.