Beanbags

Yes, I do sometimes actually finish projects.  Look!  Finished beanbags!  These bad boys were sitting in a basket next to the couch for a couple of months.  They were stitched up on three sides, turned, stuffed, and pinned on the final side.  All I had to was slip stitch the final side shut.  Yes, it took me way too long.  I assure you I am properly hanging my head in shame.

But check them out!  Six colors, two of each color, and super-light.  You can throw these things around in the house and not damage anything.  You can get hit in the face with one (although I don’t exactly recommend it) and it doesn’t hurt. I created these for friends of ours down in Imabari who teach English to kids in their house.  The last thing they need are beanbags that can really cause some damage.

And although I haven’t tested them yet, I’m pretty sure these things will be machine washable.  Now that is what I like to call a crafting coup d’état.

Felt Flurry

Yesterday I promised to let you know what I had accomplished over the weekend.  But here’s the kicker – I remembered and I’m actually doing it.  Yay for small victories!

All I can say about the weekend is that it was a flurry of felt for me.  I was working away on appliques for the childrens’ tote bags (for Ueda Joint) and got quite a lot accomplished.  Before I show you pictures, though, I have to apologize.  Mr. Kaizer took off to Osaka this morning and took the camera with him, leaving me the little digital point and shoot.  It’s still a good camera, but it was just plain dark when I took these shots.  There’s only so much mixed indoor lighting and a little flash can do for the subject of a photo – after that it’s just a terrible shot.  So, I’m sorry for the dark, far from stellar photos of the appliques.  I promise to post better pictures when I can.

First, I finished up the last little bits of embroidery on the Hello Kitties.  The eyes and nose are outlined in a backstitch with a satin stitch filling in the eyes.  I have started making the bows out of ribbon, but those are best added after the kitty has been machine stitched onto the outside of the bag.  Although only two are pictured here, I actually made 12 of these things.  I had made some of these before, so there were no surprises.

Now I wanted to make some more of the dinosaurs, but Yuzawaya stores all over Tokyo were out of the fabric.  I had to find something new, and I finally settled on this cute frog fabric.  The winking frog was the one I liked most, so I decided to make him into the applique for this particular bag.  He is about the same size as the Hello Kitty.  Instead of embroidering everything on this one, though, I got smart and cut out felt.  Much easier.  And easier is good, since I made 16 of these.  Yep.  Sixteen. Yowza.  I found out a lot about cutting very thin strips of felt while working on these guys.  Specifically, I learned that it’s tedious and I don’t like doing it.  But then I considered the amount of time each one would have taken to individually embroider and I realize my decision was probably for the best.

Only two more appliques to make, and I will be working on those this weekend.  Hopefully then I’ll be finished with the felt for a while.

May life continue to inspire you,

Miss Kaizer

Progress!

I don’t intentionally write a bunch of posts all at once.  Sometimes it just kind of happens that way.  I am trying to do a bit of crafting every day with fairly regular blog posts, but some days I’m just so darn tired that I don’t have the energy to do anything except convert oxygen into carbon dioxide.  You see, I also work.  A lot.  Like 60 hours a week a lot.  So sometimes there will be a few days without any posts and others there will be multiple posts – I do what I can, when I can.  Fair warning!

So this picture has been languishing on my hard drive for about five days now.  As you can see, we’ve been making serious progress with inventory for Ueda Joint!  Since this picture was taken the stack has nearly doubled in size. We now have the exteriors of 185 aroma healing pillows just waiting for their insides.  I’ll be sure to post more pictures as progress is made.

After all that machine sewing in one sitting, I felt an overwhelming urge to do some hand sewing.  So I made a little felt dinosaur applique.  Isn’t he cute?  I might need to make a few more of these guys…

May life continue to inspire you,

Miss Kaizer