SEW MY NAME

I have been quite tied up these days and did little sewing and beading. Just a little update for my second son’s quilt in progress. I have finished with the piecing of the top layer and hoping to do the quilting this weekend. I am using the quick-piecing method so please don’t think I laboriously join small pieces of colorful materials together. I just don’t have that much time. Housekeeping and cooking already take up a lot of my time. Sometimes I’m too tired that I end up surfing and reading blogs only. But whatever little time I have for my sewing and beading hobby gives me much satisfaction and nothing beats that joy when you get something nice done with your own two hands.

I simply love the vibrant colors and the scallops at the edge of the quilt which remind me of crayons. Until my next update, take care all of you.

Just a quick update on my eldest son’s quilt which I have finally finished thanks to the motivation of being a member in the Blogger craft club.
The part I enjoy most is the piecing of the patchwork and watching as it slowly gets bigger and bigger when more pieces are joined together. Then comes the tedious part, which is the quilting of the patchwork. I do not hand quilt my patchwork projects as I am a very impatient person. Instead I do machine quilting on my general sewing machine , usually sewing on the ditches of the seams. And boy, it is not easy doing a quilt due to the narrow space of my machine.

I wish I can buy one of those quilting machines (see picture below) but they don’t sell it here. Patchwork and quilting is not popular in Malaysia and Singapore so there is no market for it. If I can get this wonderful machine, patchwork and quilting will be much more fun. Probably the nearest I can get is to have it shipped from Australia which I’m sure will cost me a bomb.

Talk to you again soon. Now I have to finish the next quilt for my second son before starting a new one for the small one.

I have just came from visiting Katrina, one of the Blogger Craft Club members and a very active one. I can see she’s making great preparation for the arrival of her new bundle of joy with lovely pink fabrics. Do drop by at this sewing momma blog and take a peek.

In our Eastern tradition, sewing is a taboo when we are pregnant. But stubborn me has never conformed to that tradition as I have always enjoyed sewing. But now with changing times many traditions are lost which might as well as most represented unfounded fears of our elders. Some of the customs which are now losing popularity are- not able to bathe for 40 days, cannot go out for 40 days and many more restrictions for pregnant women or new moms.

I did not finished my sons’ quilts as I have been out of the house most of days. Usually I visit my sick and aged parents twice a week. And when at home it’s back to cooking, cleaning and washing. I couldn’t find a good stretch of uninterrupted time for finishing my quilts. Doing big projects is no fun if you can only afford to squeeze little time in between the chores.

I have sewn 3 simple nappy stackers from my stash of fabrics. I am trying hard not to go to the fabric store and instead try to sew projects from my years of fabric collection. And my sister-in-law has just given birth to a baby boy so the blue nappy stacker is for her baby.

My niece is giving birth to a baby girl soon and I can give either the green or the peach one as I have sewn 2 more and could not make up my mind which one to give.

I love giving nappy stacker as a gift as it is a very handy and useful to store diapers neatly. It is also easy to sew and does not require much of my time so I can easily squeeze making them in between my busy schedule.

I’m hoping to finish the quilt for my eldest son this weekend so until next Monday’s update of Blogger Craft Club, I wish you all happy sewing and crafting.

Simple and cute tote bag. Happy sewing and have a great weekend.

I’m making slow progress with my quilt but still progressing, slow and steady! I didn’t do much sewing this week except putting the borders. At this point I have sandwiched the batting in between the quilt top and the backing. I will machine quilt it and bind the whole quilt and soon it will be ready.

On Sunday night I went to Ikea to get new computer tables and Ikea happens to be on sale now. I bought plain flat sheet 100% cotton made in Ethiopia for US$ 2 only for a finished size of 150cm by 250cm. It’s just perfect for the backing of my son’s quilt. It’s really a steal and I’m so happy with my purchase. After washing, it shrunk a little by about an inch length and widthwise but the material doesn’t wrinkled so much which is common of the cheap materials.

I have also prepared the bias binding for the quilt . The binding is using the short-cut method of making bias strip. I love shortcuts and easily make this bias strip to bind the quilt in a breeze. For this single quilt, I cut 21 in by 21 in of material and get 7.5 meters of bias strip with 1.5 in width, more than enough to bind the whole quilt. If you are not familiar with making continuous bias strip click at my instructions.

To the BCC members - Happy sewing and crafting.

I am tagged by Sewing Mom and this is the first time I’m doing this meme thing. Never really understand it’s function but I guess the idea is just to have fun and to know more about the person you have tagged. This is 4 x 4 meme and basically it is answering 4 questions on 4 topics and then tag 4 people to continue with the meme. Ok here are my answers to the questions.

4 Jobs I’ve Had in My Life

1. My first job was a tutor to 12 year old group of kids but only for a year. And I did bump into some students many years later and couldn’t recognize them but they recognized me. How could I when they blossomed into pretty ladies and I was still the plain Jane, till today.
2. I tried working as a telephone operator for a short while and quit as the job was too monotonous for my liking.
3. Next I work at the postal department. It wasn’t a great place to work as it’s always dusty with mails and parcels everywhere so I didn’t stay long.
4. My last job lasted for more than 20 years in the airline industry in three departments. I enjoyed working life, especially the many friends I met. I quit after moving into the last department when I met the first and only b**** in my entire life who made things so difficult that my husband told me to quit my job.

4 Shows I DVR (TIVO)
I don’t record shows and in fact has never been a TV fan because I can’t sit still for too long. So I watch little TV which are mainly -

1. Korean dramas
2. Americon Idol
3. Thurday TV forum in Bahasa Malaysia
4. Comedies like Desperate Housewives, Mr Bean( when I remember to tune in)

4 Places I’ve Been

1. Johannesburg - The kids love the safari very much and on our second visit we went animal hunting everyday for 5 straight days.
2. Switzerland - A beautiful place I wish I can visit again one day.
3. LA Disneyland - The place where I get to be the kid again - running around, jumping into roller coasters and see all my favorite childhood fairy tales characters.
4. Cairo - A colorful and enchanting place with the pyramids, museums and arts.

4 Favorite Foods

1. Cheese Cake - love all type of cheese cake whether it is the Japanese cheese cake, traditional cheese cake or the crust type.
2. Spaghetti - I’m a lousy cook but my family love my version of spaghetti. Of course must top it up with cheese.
3. Kebab - Started liking kebab when I visited Cairo. Here we found a nice eatery serving Turkish kebab.
4. Bread - I am more of a bread than a rice person. I eat bread with almost everything and I also have a bread maker.

4 People I Tag

1. Verlyn from http://verlyn.name/
2. Evelyn from http://www.amethysti.com/
3. Serine from http://www.insbeaute.com
4. Doris from http://www.dorislive.com/

Ok gals, happy me- me-ing.

I have been busy for the whole week that I did not touch my patchwork quilt. For those who don’t know me I love to sew patchwork and fabric crafts, I love to make beaded jewelry and I also love blogging and surfing the internet. Let me see what I have been doing for the past whole week.

I managed to do a matching set of pearl beaded watch, bracelet and ring for my youngest sister. She wanted in combination of black and white. I did a simple white freshwater beaded pearl watch for my younger sister-in-law who is a sweet, simple person and a teacher by profession. And my eldest sister-in-law who happens to be my favorite for she is a very good cook, wanted her pearl watch in gold. And I can see that she loves it very much. All my sisters and sister-in-laws each has got a watch hand-beaded by me. So, one woman’s craze is other women’s gain.

I have always loved the classic look of pearls so the reason why I bought many strands of pearls. Moreover Swarovski and freshwater pearls are quite reasonably priced here. But not gemstone or semi-precious stones which are quite expensive. I guess that is why many enthusiastic beaders use crystals, pearls and other glass beads for their beading projects. Jewelry making hobby is popular here because it is not as difficult or time-consuming as sewing and patchwork. But it is also an expensive hobby once you are addicted. Each time I visit a bead store I can easily spend a hundred dollar, so I try not to go often. And I do not want to calculate or keep track of my beading hobby expenses, else my hubby faints.

Recently my dear friend Liudmila has bewitched me with her malachite beads that I have been busy buying them and other gemstones over the internet as I cannot find malachite beads here. So, soon I will be beading gemstones instead of just pearls and crystals. And guess what else I did? I have just bought another domain name www.beadedgemstone.com and right now cannot figure out how to make time to maintain another site. So I shall just park it with my hosting company until I am ready.

One more thing which I have been busy with is that I am helping a friend who is a Forex trader to produce and launch his Forex Ebook. Digging another grave for myself? The reason why I do this is because I get to learn by helping others. I don’t have a product or Ebook to sell right now but who knows in the near future?

And I have just changed hosting company and many graphics are missing and need to be restored. So pardon me if I am slow in updating my site but I intend to get the quilts for my sons ready as soon as possible.

Talk to you again next week for update of my quilts and meanwhile happy stitching, crafting and happy blogging too. Please check out Mr Linky at Blogger Craft Club to see what others did.

Welcome to my new home =)
(I have just changed Hosting company)

There is still a lot of stuff in the boxes, waiting for me to unpack. I will get them ‘display’ asap.

Meanwhile, feel free to look around.

PS : Most of the graphics were not uploaded during the move and I will try to restore them but I believe it will take sometimes.

I am supposed to do the third quilt for my youngest son and complete main patterns for all 3 quilts before adding borders. But I may have to look for more materials to match well the earlier 2 pieces sewn. So I decided to plan for the borders for the first 2 quilts before going on to the last quilt. So the last quilt will be designed on the left-over materials of the first 2 quilts revolving around Overall Sam applique which I have just sewn.

I drew Overall Sam onto a drawing paper and when satisfied I cut the paper patterns to transfer to the materials mainly using scraps which I have collected over the years. It is simple and fun pattern to sew for young boys.

Sunbonnet Sue or Sunbonnet lady is also one of my favorite patterns which can also be sewn on projects for young girls as it is also another easy pattern to reproduce. I did this Sunbonnet Sue patchwork bag many years ago when my daughter was younger.

This is what I love about patchwork, able to use scraps to make other projects. The designing,the color-matching and co-ordinating is also the fun part.

Until next Monday for the quilts update. See you soon.

This is happy Liudmila with a patchwork table topper which I sent before Christmas and only arrived early this week. She did warn me that she may not get my present but I didn’t worry too much about it as I’m sure things couldn’t be as bad as she painted about the postal situation in Italy. Anyway at the same time I sent out another package to SewingMom in Texas who received hers in the first week of January. So it wasn’t a problem at my end. We both have given up about her receiving my little gift but it finally came after 2 months! And she called it a miracle.

Click here to go to Liudmila’s blog. She always has interesting posts to read and at times she is comical. She thinks I need to do engineering calculations to do the patchwork! Ain’t she funny?

Liudmila, it seems Christmas comes early this year for you. Anyway you are more beautiful than the patchwork.