Patchwork Quilt for So Yun.

The camera hides the flaws.

So my cousin's toddler, Shiho, is expecting a little sister next month. Since I've already taken a crack at making a blanket for him, I saw this as a great opportunity to try making a patchwork quilt for the baby on the way.

I started with a specific fabric I liked:

And then I chose other fabric based on the colors in the first fabric:

I scanned the patterns into my computer and made a layout to see how it would look together:

Looked pretty good so I continued to cut and sew away.

Betsy's mad I'm sewing instead of playing fetch with her.

When the patchwork part was done, I sandwiched a layer of batting in between and hand quilted with some bright pink embroidery thread.

 

Finally, I sewed the binding around the edge with a cotton lace trim. I didn't have the right sewing foot so it was difficult to feed all the layers of fabric and batting together into the sewing machine evenly. There was a lot of swearing involved.

A lot of swearing...

It is 80% perfect. You wouldn't be able to see the mistakes unless you picked up the blanket and really looked at it :| I just hope my future niece doesn't grow up swearing too much because of the negative juju I put into it.

Still, it is made with love.

--UPDATE--

Here is baby So Yun with her patchwork quilt:

peach tart.

I made a peach tart!

My co-worker and I went to Demerest Farms in Hillsdale, NJ for some lunch and more peaches yesterday. These peaches are delectable! So juicy and sweet! I sliced some up and made a peach tart using a recipe from the Food & Wine website. I'm a sucker for a yummy crust and this crust is bangin'!

*om nom nom*

peach crumble.

I had some leftover filling left from the hand pies so I made a peach crumble.

I made the crust out of gingersnap cookies.
 

The crumbly topping is made out of more pulverized gingersnap cookies, flour, butter, and brown sugar. It took me a while to figure out the spicy flavor was coming from the gingersnap cookies.

Peach hand pie.

I made peach hand pies!

My co-workers and I visited Demarest Farms in Hillsdale, NJ during our lunch hour. It was the perfect day to spend time eating outdoors on a farm. They had a great salad bar and made to order hot/cold sandwiches.

Peaches are in season now so visitors were welcome to pick peaches in their orchards. They had an abundance of picked peaches for sale.

There was no way all the peaches could be eaten before they went bad so I made little peach hand pies.

I used Smitten Kitchen's Bourbon Peach Hand Pie recipe. I cheated a little bit and used store bought pie dough. Didn't have the time to chill my dough and what not. I always found homemade pastry dough so time consuming to do. I used a biscuit cutter to cut out the dough. They sort of look like dumplings.

These turned out okay. I have the tendency to use less sugar than the recipe calls for but I think I shouldn't have skimped on the added sweetness. I also think next time I'll try to make my own pastry dough.
Looks pretty though, don't it?

Ve's Kona coffee in drawstring bag.

Another thing about drawstring bags is they make great gift bags. Instead of wrapping presents with gift wrap where the paper is thrown away, gift bags have further use.

After returning from Hawaii, I decided to take up the ukulele. Was glad Ve said she had a spare ukulele she could give me to get started. In exchange, I'm giving her some Kona coffee I bought from the big island of Hawaii.

I used floral patterned cotton fabric and cotton muslin. A few years ago, I once worked as a designer for a shoe company. The drawstring was made with laces from shoe samples that would've otherwise been thrown away. A JoAnn's Fabric store opened in my hometown and when I visited, I went bonkers over their cotton lace trim.

Drawstring bags for small clothes.

My current hobby obsession: drawstring bags!

I love them! There are so many uses for them. I've used a couple plain cotton produce drawstring bags to pack my small clothes while traveling, one for wearing and one for washing. I've tried looking for prettier ones on Etsy but most of them look Holly Homemaker-y. So I decided to sew some myself. At first, I tried to study the plain cotton bags I bought to figure out how to construct them. However, I found Youtube tutorials to be even more helpful.

These are a kinda sloppy at the top because I had some trouble making the channel for the drawstring to go through. I used different type of trim to differentiate the bags for underwear that can be worn and underwear that needs to be washed. It's a subtle difference that didn't require me to literally label them as "DIRTY" or "CLEAN".

sonia's wedding cake topper.

When my cousin Sonia got married in Hawaii last month, she had asked me to make a cake topper for her wedding cake! I was more than happy and excited to design one for her. To get an idea of what kind of cake topper she wanted, I directed her to a Pinterest search. I asked her to pick out any image that piqued her interest.

This is what she chose:

I dig Domokun but not on a wedding cake. This shouldn't look like a child's birthday cake after all! I focused on the little wooden clothespin dolls and drew up a design for Sonia to see:

After she OK-ed the design, I got crackin:

All the materials were bought from Michael's. I wrapped fabric covered wire (found in the floral section) with peach colored embroidery thread. I used white satin ribbon and hot glued a dress together. The top part of the dress was hot glued on using lace ribbon with beading already sewn in on it. Bride was a piece of cake.

After I painted the faces with acrylic paint and a fine brush, it was time to work on the groom. Now this was a pain in the ass to do. I bought a square of black fabric and hot glued the pants. That was easy enough. Unfortunately, hot glue wasn't gonna solve the problem of construction the suit jacket. I literally had to stitch a little blazer together with sleeves and a teeny hem.

I had bought some fancy lime green paper and silver glittery stickers to make the festive bunting. It's all glued together with a little bit of Elmer's glue.

I folded some origami paper cranes out of white iridescent paper and stuck them on bamboo skewers. Holes had to be drilled on the sides of the wooden base after I painted it a pearly lime green. I brought the cake topper with me to Hawaii and was surprised to find out I would be the one decorating the cake!

Here's how the end result looked:

Congratulations Sonia & Kevin!