Origami Mommy

Latest quick projects

Since returning from our trip, I've been finishing up other small projects that had been lingering away. It felt like I just couldn't justify moving onto new projects until these were done. Here's the completed pillow I made with a Wee Wonderfuls Tulip Fairy as the centerpiece. I'm really happy with how it turned out. I also made a baby receiving blanket with Echino fabric - a quick and satisfying project. The vivid colors make me happy. The online tutorial can be found here. I love the Purlbee blog - there are a million projects on here I want to try.

In fact, these little felt hearts, below, are also from the Purlbee blog, here:

They are so quick and easy - the perfect way to satisfy the urge to handsew if you have only a few moments.I think they make a perfect and compelling project for a young beginning crafter. The doughnut took a bit longer but I've been wanting to complete some more felt food for Mia's play kitchen. I think the boys were more fascinated by this than she was, though!

I also finished up a few dolls for Daniel and Mia. Daniel's is based on a pattern from Wee Wonderfuls. He decided he wanted his to look like Ron Weasley - but he decided this after we put the hair on. He helped stuff his doll and felt so proud to be part of the whole process. I should have supervised a bit more and made sure the head had adequate stuffing - but I also wanted for him to feel like he helped create his doll. Mia wanted hers to have lots and lots of long, wavy hair. The waves were made by braiding, spraying with water, and then ironing the yarn before undoing the braid. This was my first attempt at embroidering a doll's face once the doll is completed - for some reason it's hard to find online directions for hiding the knots - so I had to improvise. If anyone can give me more tips I'd love to hear them!

Finally, I've been using one of the small baskets I made to hold a tiny baby slipper knitting project. These baskets are proving to be handy for keeping small projects separate from one another. I think I might add a pom-pom to the slippers once I am done with them. These slippers use almost no yarn at all and the tutorial is online here.

It is nice to be doing some knitting again! 

The clearest river

We're back now from our trip to the countryside. We were in a village called Gujo-Hachiman, which is where DH and I first met years ago. It's famous for clear rivers, fishing, and rock jumping.

Afternoons were spent at the river, where soothing water sounds and glistening rocks were the best therapy for our city-weary selves.

I was amazed by the simple beauty of rocks under cold river water. I gazed at them all afternoon and the children gathered them for their little games and pretend play or just skipped rocks in the river.

We stayed in an inn where my husband did his homestay when we first lived in this village. We always stay in the same beautiful room facing the mountains.

I lugged along some of my handcrafting (of course!) and completed a few little "sarubobo" (courtesy of Mairuru), which I've since found originate right near this village, in a city just north of here called Takayama. Such an apt coincidence.

The boys had their summer Japanese homework to do, and Mia always drags out her "work" when they are studying or drawing. It's really adorable to see 3 little heads bent down in concentration like this.

Now we are back, and getting ready for end-of-summer guests and the start of school. Hopefully that means I'll have finally have time again for a new origami or recyclable tutorial for you soon!

Bird love

I've been obsessed with birds in my crafting lately. Here's something I embroidered onto a baby gown for our new baby:

You can get this design for free and see other lovely things at CraftPudding - I adore her stamps!

I also made this bird and leaf applique pouch, from a Japanese kit from Hobbyra-Hobbrye.

This is the sweet back - a simple bird on a twig.

I got the kit because I had never done applique before and thought it would be a useful way to learn that as well as some quilted pouch techniques. Plus, there are a lot of projects that I want to do that are just not getting off the ground because I'm just not getting the concentrated time I need to do the prepwork for them.  I love the kits I've found in Japan - there are some pretty decent ones here.  I feel ready to tackle designing something of my own now.

Speaking of kits, I can't wait to try a fleece ball from Ikat Bag's new shop.

But that will have to wait for now. We're off on a trip to the countryside - have a good week!

Birthday season and the very best chocolate cake recipe ever

Birthday season has begun in our family. All six of us (including new little one due in October) have birthdays during the late summer and fall. I splurged on a wonderful birthday banner I spotted on Etsy. I loved it, and knew I wouldn't be able to get a variety of nice fabrics to make one myself in time for the start of birthday season. So I ordered it from Meringue Designs (check out her gorgeous pillows, too!) and it arrived an hour before our first birthday celebration began.

It will get so much use this fall, I'm thinking we should just leave it up until our last birthday in November.

For my husband's birthday in early August, I made a chocolate cake from the very best chocolate cake recipe I've ever tried. I've baked so many homemade cake recipes over the years and they were all too dry for my liking. Mira, an online friend who blogs at This Lovely Moment, generously shared this wonderful recipe with me after seeing my SOS for a moist cake recipe on Facebook. Here's the recipe. I can't recommend it enough.

This photo is all I have, and it wasn't the best frosting job (that's what happens when you have 3 children eagerly clamoring to help out) but it was made with love, and that's what counts, right?

All of our gifts were handmade. Daniel had been making little cards and trinkets and paper presents for weeks and stashing them away in a secret place. He and Benjamin also made games to play with their daddy. They spent a happy day or two planning and creating their games. A handmade banner, homemade birthday cake, and joyful children's creations made for a lovely celebration.

Needle book and other tiny projects

My projects are getting tinier and tinier. Here's a needle book I made the other day. I did the tree free-form style. I had a strong craving to embroider an autumn tree somewhere (although the hot weather has just now kicked in here in Japan), and this was the result.

Finally a place to store all my needles! It's only about 2 inches by 2 inches. The only problem is that Mia thought this was a little book I made for her, and keeps trying to grab it. I suppose a small felt book will be my next tiny project.

I also made her some small bags out of linen. She prefers the brighter one while I prefer the (as yet unfinished) subdued one. A great way to use up yo-yos.

Finally, the ultimate of small projects - a tiny hairpin.

I made a lot of mistakes with this, but it was just a first try, to see how it works, and oh, it's so much fun. Here's the wonderful tutorial by Mairuru.  I'm going to make more of these this weekend - we're going on another car trip outside Tokyo. I'll be giving a talk on diaper-free babies in Japanese at a workshop. More when I return - and please do stick around, because I am planning a giveaway in the next few weeks!

Finding the time to craft

How do you all find the time to craft or indulge in other personal pursuits? That's been my challenge for the last few weeks since summer vacation started. The children are pretty used to doing their own crafts alongside me, but of course I am much more distracted than usual. I'm trying to keep my projects to small, manageable and simple things right now - dreams of dresses and other such things are put off till the fall. 

I started getting really excited about beading because I finally got a small kit of tools. I'd never realized before how accessible and easy professional-looking bead projects are to make if you just have a wire cutter, pliers, and the right little components. It is very quick, too. While I was doing it the boys were digging through all the beads themselves and looking for all sorts of treasure - they've always loved beads and beading but I never expected them to get excited about beads for "real" jewelry. 

This is one that I got started on - since it's a "floating" style necklace it is very fast; the only tricky part is making sure the beads are spaced equally apart.

While I worked on that, the boys were making their own things. B loves anything with gold in it. Daniel is into crystals.

Then I moved on to tiny sewing projects. I loved these tissue holders because they take 10 minutes, max, to make. 

They're both made of Japanese fabric. I want to get more of the polka dotted one by Lecien - I realize I don't have enough plainer fabric to use as lining when I make bags and pouches.

Speaking of which this is a bag I made yesterday. I made it very quickly because I just had to try a tote bag to see how it's done. You know? I wanted to get it out of my system. I was excited to try out the french seams mentioned on this tutorial at Sew, Mama, Sew. However, I learned that if the material I use is too heavy, it won't work well. Both the fabric and the lining were fairly thick and it was hard to make the corners as sharp as I'd like, plus I now have to handsew the top sides down because they wouldn't go through my machine.

Here's a closeup of the strap and lining. The strap is described in the Sew, Mama, Sew tutorial and I really like it. 

While I made that, the boys were seriously busy making a fleet of paper airplanes, because B had discovered a trick to make them fly far and fast. So I was sewing while paper airplanes were flying around my head! Kind of a typical moment in my life actually.

I finally finished my first needlework, about a week ago, using a Wee Wonderfuls pattern, and was waiting for some inspiring idea to come to mind about what to do with it. Frame it? put it in a hoop on the wall? Finally I decided to make a pillow out of it. Here it is and the blue is what I think I'll use for the back of the pillow. I am going to wait to finish it until I get a pillow form so I know how big to make it.

If you do needlework, what's your favorite way of showcasing it when you're done? I will add embroidery to little baby items (once I get or make little baby items!) but what do you do with larger projects? 

I also made a few baskets lately - again, to figure out how they're made. I am really happy with how this basket turned out. It's quite small and I think I will make a couple of these as gifts.

It gave me a chance to practice boxing the corners in. I also tried this basket, but it was larger, and ended up a little floppy, and handles this thin were hard. Mia loves carrying it around though. I also made the baby blocks inside but wasn't as pleased with them - it's hard to get them right with just batting, not foam blocks, which I'd rather not use. So I think I'm done making baby blocks!

One last basket photo - this one turned out okay. It was the first one I made. These handles were better, though too thick. One of these days I'll get them right! Though it shaves a lot of time off this project not to put any handles on at all.

If you want to make a basket of your own, the tutorial I used for basic reference is here.

Finally, the boys have been playing around with paper lately. We have a tiny little paper maker - just postcard sized - which Daniel really likes. I wish there were a way to make the pulp without using a blender - if anyone knows, please tell me! The original kit came with some pieces of dried pulp that kids could shake in a bottle with some water and marbles (to help agitate them). Maybe I could make a big batch in the blender and then divide it up and dry it. I think Daniel would make paper more often if it didn't involve having to ask an adult to blend the pulp first.

And a final paper project - both boys enjoyed this - just watercolor paints and salt. Here's a beautiful blog, Kleas, with a link. It's a very easy project - you should give it a try!

tiny pincushion tutorial

The children and I have been working on a lot of projects - mostly sewing, beading, and some papercraft - so I'll post about that next week. In the meantime here is a brief tutorial for a tiny pincushion made with a bottle cap as the base. You can whip these up in about 2 minutes! Very addictive to make.

You'll need a bottle cap, a small amount of fabric and a piece of ribbon wide enough to cover the side of the bottle cap, a bit of batting, and some thread and glue.

Cut your fabric into a circle somewhat bigger than the bottle cap, as in the photo above. (How big you make it depends on how big you want the pincushion to be - but this is a forgiving project and you don't have to be very precise.)

Glue the ribbon around the bottle cap. While it dries, start a running stitch around the perimeter of the fabric circle. Kind of like you're making a fabric yo-yo.

When you're done, gather it in, and fill with some batting. 

Next, gather in all the way so you close it up, tie it with a knot, and then glue it upside down inside the bottle cap. Quick and easy! 

I like that the cap prevents your pins and needles from going through all the way to the other side and poking you by accident - a problem I've had with my other handmade pincushion. I also love how tiny these are. You can glue a fabric or felt circle on the bottom if you like. If you don't have ribbon, you can use bias tape or make your own bias tape out of contrasting fabric. I did that for some of the pincushions in the photo below. You can also use felt, maybe even cut with pinking shears, instead of ribbon. I think I'll have to try that!