Patchwork Pennii needle-books & Pinni Cushions

Welcome to the {Patchwork Pennii Needle-Books & Pinni Cushions} Preview! This time, I will keep this review short and you'll find below each photo there's link or links will take you to the listing(s) if you would like to visit more. 

I am quiet proud of how these patchwork pieces turn out! There are quite lots labor in love went into them. They turn out quite nicely in color combinations and each of them gets its own characteristic. Each set is used different backing fabric print, so stands on its own!  There are limited and the last batch of the patchwork needle-books and pin cushions.  

Brown- {145}  

Browns are such humble colors in many ways.  It is the color of our land, trees, nuts that we consumed/not consumed?! It is earth tone colors that some of us like/ not a fan of! I found good classic browns that I have my eyes on are chestnut, walnut, dark chocolate, Raffia is another lighter grade of brown. By giving some accent color in the brown range, I added oranges and yellow. Slightly change of the off-white to give the work more distinct. 

{Earth}

{Chocolate}

Blue- {152}
As I shared on Instagram the other day. Blue means freedom and space to me, but when I just came to states. My friends always told me how blue they feel; such as Blue Monday. I found that interesting how we often fell in love/dislike and use colors to describe the emotion of ourselves. The blue is such a wide range of the hue;  sky, Robin eggs, Peacock and ever so popular Aqua.

{cloud}
{robin egg}
{sky}
{bluebell}

Feedsack- {172}

The feedsacks fabric are soft with gentle texture in them. The second best part of this fabric is great for hand-quilting. The retro colors and the floral inspired so many reprints these days. They are rare and hard to find these days now. Colors are likely faded and a few spot being stained. These prints come with its own story. Most of the feedsacks are from 1930's and later.  The era, people repurpose it for making clothes for children, kitchen accessories (pot holder, aprons, etc). Nowadays, they seem like reminders and records of what were before and allow us to trace the fashion and colors back. It takes good effort to wash, dry, and press them! I admire friends who make this happen!

{vintage}

Gray-
It is a neutral or we so called without color. In drawing, we use the grays by using the varies scale to bring out the object in dimensions.  It is interesting to put one gray scale patch together and just to see how these tone interact. I added just little accent colors to it. I though of warm colors to bring and balance out the cold, but somewhere in my head didn't make it happen. I was in the idea of fresh and new look.

{steel}

Green-
Green is for summer?! I like how evergreen still grow and keep its color strong in the cold winter days. Green is such a energetic and full of positive color! I like how pistachio, mint, honey dew, pear, sour apple, kiwi colors flowing around in the grocery stores. For the dark contrast green; basil, hunter green catch my eye! I paired the green range with yellow and tiny red print. Used some of the fruit prints to bring out some summer colors!

{honey dew}
{pear}
{mint}
{sour apple}

Liberty London-

The most gorgeous fabric to hand-quilt! It is such a nice and soft texture to have and work with! The colors are vivid in person and the contrast between floral prints and little icon prints make it fun to work with. It is such a pleasure to work with Liberty print.

{Tanya}

Mix & Match

It is also called scrappy patchwork! Sometimes colors, prints in scale, and designs are accidentally match to each other! I like the idea of mix & match and always surprised by the outcome afterwards.

{random}
{mix}
{match}

Pink- {127}

My eyes go to peach kinda pink, melon, peony, and deep rose. The contrast would be fuchsia and candy pink. The soft pinks are perfect for accommodating the dark red {apple red}d, slightly mint green, and banana yellow, so on! I also found that pink goes well with grays and browns! I think it is a such tender and soft colors that could work with large range of colors!

{melon}
{peach}
{peony}
{primrose}

Purple- {146}

It is such a strange in between color! It is mixed by red and blue. Adding white to tine up and add black to give dark tones.  What do you think of purple? Here are some purples that I study and enjoy; Lilac, orchid, Thistle, pansy, and petunia. These purples seem are more soft and elegant. 

{Pansy}

Red-

Red is such a strong color! Since it is such a powerful color. Likely using off-white prints will blend out the high contrast a little more. Some of soft colors and tiny print also help out this balance. The red that seem catch my eyes are apple, ruby, tomatoes.

{Apple}
{Ruby}

Yellow {142}

Yellow is the most luminous of all colors. It captures our attention more than other colors. In the natural world, yellow is the color of sunflowers. Good yellow prints are hard to find. These mustard, corn-yellow, buttercup, curry, sunflower are the yellows that appeal instantly. A color that I could use to balance with majority of prints. Orange always seems a nice accent color to that! 

{butter}

{cheddar}

{daffodil} 

{sunflower}

Thank you again for the preview! It seems hard to make just one of two sentence for all what I have been working on! 

Each patchwork needle-book comes with lined with a 100% wool felt piece for the needle placement. All the hardware piece are hand installed. The closure piece is made with 100% linen piece to give extra zakka look! All the patchwork piece is hand-quilted throughout the cotton batting and patchwork itself. 

These pincushions are as well being hand-quilted and added a special sewing trim on the side! Lots sweet vintage trims are being use. These cushions are stuffed with polyester filling to make them puff and soft.


Shop talk-

** Each order will be package in a sewing machine sewn none-toxic glassine paper bag to fit each book and seal with wash tape.

**At this time, I cannot guarantee the First-Class mail {$3.00} will make it to the holiday gifting. There are two shipping method now; you can select the shipping option at the check out. Shipping in flat rate priority envelope {$5.50} might be make it to your holiday gifting at this moment.  All the order will come with tracking number, so we both can track the package. It has been slowing down for the postal service last few weeks, but I try to send out your order within 2 business days.
For the international shipping, First class is recommended as priority is costly for shipping the small item.

** Please do review your shipping address before you check out or after check out. Or need to ship to a different address. During this time of the year, the post office is having high volume of packages and letters to delivery. If you are ordering the item as a gift and would like to send to a different address, please do let me know in the {buyer to sender} box. Thank you so much for the double checking. I hope the package will arrive to your mailbox safely and possible on time. 

Thank you for supporting my works & Enjoy~

p.s. The number that indicated within { } is the hearts that received in Instagram.  It was interesting to see how we heart colors differently.   

xxc

Making patchwork way...

The package arrived last week. It was a bit trouble getting it, but it is here! I waited till S to get home and took photos of her sitting on top of package then sent the photos to Fifi. It is a tradition we do here, ever since S was 2. The package seems a bit smaller now { as she is a bigger girl now}, but the content of cares and thoughts are always grater than the package itself!

Did you know?? The so so thoughtful gift that Fifi got me?! It is a fountain pen with my name engraved on the cap! I can't tell you how much I love this pen when I open it the other day! It is such a smooth pen to write with and always have been one of things that in the my pocket list that I have wished to find one for myself! I have been using the new pen since it arrived! I, so careful when I get the cap off the pen then so careful to put it back on.  I was so nervous when S was taking the cap off! I kept telling her, would you please be so careful? would you please?

As always there are lots goods in the package; gifts, cards, snacks from nieces and families. Mom's {good for you} soup base and all sort of little things that we so miss! We've got snacks for this winter than we'll get another package in the spring for the spring then summer! Those care packages always fuel us up and we kinda depend on them four-season long!

In last couple of years, we've tried different way of advent calendar. Oh, none of them work quiet well for us! This year, we are trying something new and fun! I took two pieces of good watercolor paper then sew the grid lines on the paper then stamp the dates and made it into a December calendar. Each day, we would draw a little image on as we go on! Not much time is required, maybe 5 minutes or less for a little calendar day. It has been great since we started.  I though it would be a fun new tradition for us and would be a nice little drawing to frame up someday? or a little holiday record for us?

I am a bit embarrassed, but I've been shopping for little cardboard houses in bargain prices. Oh, I know, it is funny how I got into all these village houses last two years. Nothing fancy, just little cardboard houses and lots miniture trees. They make everything twice cozy around here! I have plan to make some cardboard houses when the time slow down! When I was an art student in high school, I used to build these cardboard houses for my interior design class. It has been too long and will probably take a very time time to refresh the concepts and skills. I would really love to build a village of my own, so I could bring all my neighbors/ friends with me! It would be perfect to build a fabric ware house right next to the house I live {smile}! I shouldn't go on about this village houses because it would be way too long of a post... {giggle}!

The last batch of the needle-books and pin-cushions are almost ready! Each set is unique on its own and the lining fabric is all different as I really would like them to stand on its own! I am really proud of how they turn out! Lots little hand-quilting and ladder stitches for all the closures. I hope you'll like them as much as I do!

There are limited colors; four pinks, four yellows, four blues, four greens, two reds, one purples, two browns, one feedsack, one Liberty London, one grays, then a few more sets are matched colors.  Just little bit of everything!

I'll be listing them later in the {shop} this week and will write a post for it.  I will do a short preview with you if you miss the IG posts that I made.  There will be a sum up post for it! Stay turn!

{Thank You} for all the kindly comments from the last post! You all made me feel great about the places that I have been in and life we made here! I do hope that each quilt that I made comes with a memory, a reason and a why! I like all the good stories when my friends told me about their family quilts and hope someday my quilts will become family stories as well! I do believe though, everything gets better each day and some days it is ok to be arrgh!  

xxc

The Quilt: Home in Midwest

 {selfie}

When you scroll your way down, were you thinking what I am thinking? I hope you do! It is a quilt that is so painful to make! By painful, I mean a good one; I ripped all the pieces apart when I was 1/3 way through the piecing then re-pieced, trimmed every squares, matched most of the seams, but still have a few oops! Quilted it on my little Patchwork Edition Bernina and kept thinking when this is going to end?! {as my right hand wrist was bothering me for a few weeks by then}. But after all these steps, I must tell you that this quilt has all my loves for almost 20 years living in Midwest, friendships that made and much much more!

It possible was from this {post} I wrote back in 2011 when we just moved to North Dakota. We had no friends, no connections to anyone locally, and everything started from scratch for us again! We were quiet brave then!  It was scary and lonesome! I was more active in writing and more expressive about what I was that time! That first winter in N.D. was terrible hard and extremely long and not to mention fridge cold weather! We experienced what it felt like 40 below with the negative 40 windchill and we also encountered so many unexpected events! Oh, it seemed never ended at time and I never though I made it through my three-year master program study!

After a week or two posting, I've got an unfamiliar addressed package in our little metal mail box! The first thing, S said, did you buy more fabrics? I did't think I did! So, who's address is this? Do I know this address? Did I order any fabric, maybe? I opened the package and found a beautiful layer cake fabric and with a very kind note from Monica aka {mountainofthedragon}. Monica was the very first few Etsy stores that I purchased fabrics from when I just discovered online fabric shops. I actually had no idea that she was reading the blog! Within the note, Monica wrote she was feeling sad that I was being homesick and feeling sad. She wanted to cheer me up, so sent me a care package!  Then there were many just because care packages came to us! From time to time, I still ask; why me?

I reread that note so many times and treasure the package for years. It moved with me to many places and was waiting for a right quilt pattern for it and really just waited the time to come! That took me four years to turn it into a quilt that I believe will sit in my heart for years to come! Not just the kindness friendship that Monica extended to me, but also the heartfelt feeling that till this day I still hold on tightly; Generosity!

Last year, when we moved in our new home, I have had the plan to make a quilt as a housewarming quilt to ourselves! However, with what I was going through it was impossible to even think about sewing and great things around us. I think it is just kinda that way sometimes! It is hard to remind myself the cheerleaders out there for me and hard to tell myself it will get better?! There are quiet a bit of struggles and it took long time to sort it out!

This quilt is not my designed quilt pattern, it is fully inspired by a Japanese magazine that I subscribed last year. As reading through the magazine, the pattern for making the house quilt came and soon I knew it would be perfect to use Retro pop layer cake as the starter quilt colors. I plan this quilt  will be a family quilt, so BIG is the idea of the quilt size. The quilt math for the quilt top took a bit longer, cutting the layer up was scary, adding more prints to the quilt top pile was alike shopping through the stash once more time.

Somehow I stopped again...

It took another month or longer to restart working on this quilt. All the sewing seams were ripped off because I wasn't satisfied how it turn.  This involved trimming job ahead, pressing seams open in proper way. Yet, I wasn't in a hurry at all; no time framing for completing this quilt, but truly enjoy he making process!

The repeating of stop and start making this quilt was over a year. Sometimes, I made a few blocks a day and sometimes was hard to push forward to make another sewing day count. The week before we took off for the summer family visit, I was quiet ready to finish it! The entire week, I was absorbed with thread, fabric, and sewing! Maybe a bit time space out for self!  I was sewing most part of the day and it felt really great and accomplished!

The finished quilt top was waiting for the backing.  It took another few months because I was hoping to give it a name and the name would be still my heart for time to come. {Home in Midwest} somehow pops in my head and I think it is quiet perfect for it! It is labelled in 2014 because I wanted to remember the year we first have a real place to called Home! After almost 20 years in the states and moved to many places. I have sat my heart in the Midwest and that also included friendships extended to us here at quarter inch mark.

I never have though I'd make any friends from this blog and never though this place gets any people to follow up! It started out with a though of a place that I can record part of our life adventure and my works. I know eventually it will come to an end as we all move on in different directions and life goes on and on!

This blog allows me to met so many wonderful people! They are in my heart even though I haven't get the chance to meet them in real part of life.  Since we moved quiet often, it is harder to keep in touch with friends that met in the city/town we lived. I've always feel like a passenger passing from places to places and from town to town; never have a ground that could hold on tight to. But I thankful that can bring quarter inch mark with me whenever and where ever I go on {smile}!

When I was much younger, I always wondered about how our life would take us to. I always tried really hard to adopted and fitted in all things around us and tried to be very energetic about every little events, but it was hard, unreal and unhappy! After years to come and all, I discovered being the most authentic self is the honest way to live and be.

It is really hard to say {Thank You} in the way that I would like it "sounded" here! But {Thank You} for all your unconditional loves of friendships, readerships and endless coming back! I do read all your comments with a big {smile} on and reply in my head {So sweet of you} { Wow! You think the same!} { These emojis are so cute!} { How far do you live?} {This is kind!} {Why?} and much more. I hope you do and know that you are not just encouraging, but meaningful!


xxc

p.s. The package has finally arrived! 

between times...

This time of the year is particular quiet for us! The icy-rain made extra cool and home is the a cozy and fussy place to be. All the photos are gloomy-ish and no sunny lights for days! Our mama and baby trees are up over the weekending! I always and have been thinking to make a tree skirt, but it hasn't been happening for last 10 years, so let's say! It is alright to just use a cloth and be random!

I learned a new term in baking; sweet milk= whole milk. Likely it happens in old recipes; back then people distinguish it from buttermilk by adding sweet to the milk. The pound cake turned out really delicious! We can't stop eating it; one thin slice after another thinner slice then after another possible a bite slice. So, it only took us a half day to devour the half cake! I had extra cup of coffee each day and bed time was past mid-night! oh dear..

The bread turned out soft this time and last time was a bit dry if you ask me! I added sesame seeds on some of them and they are mostly gone by now as we shared half of the little rolls with our friends. Oh, yes they are "rolls", but a oops action during the slicing dough part. I guess they look a bit like steam buns {smile}. It is so much nicer to make our bread again! I, thankful to a trustworthy oven now!

We accompanied a small roasted chicken {5 pound}; some salt, fresh ground black pepper then give it a nice rub; bake in 450 degree for 45 mins., some meshed potatoes, sweet corn { is this mid-western thing?},  and broccoli salad. Oh, no casseroles and stuffing dishes around here! I am not very good and just don't know what or which to make. The pie didn't make it to the table this time, as my right wrist hand still bothers me. I think we'll save it for the later year.

After dinner, I deboned all the chicken and put them in the big pot added a whole onion head with skin {wash/ sliced in half}, few celery sticks, a big carrot, cut into chunks {with skin/wash} then simmer it for a good 4 hours; at the mid-point I always make sure it boil to the high then turn it down again. This is the best chicken broth that I could get; homemade! I always let the broth cool off before put them in the clear containers then let them sat in the clear container over night on the kitchen counter, freeze them the next morning. I don't add more salt and pepper at all, since the deboned chicken has a bit of leftover flavoring.

While waiting for the broth simmering, I am up in the studio slowly hand-quilting my way through the hours here. There are not quite 30 sets of the needle books after I counted again. But these are turning out so nice! I made a few color sets that's different than what I usual do and it is quiet nice to see them being quilted. The extra texture highlight some of the prints.

I took some good holiday sales over the weekend. The very much needed bigger sweatshirts, snow boots, gloves for S. It is getting harder to find clothes for her as she is between the big girl, L and the lady, s.  I went ahead and ordered the lady M for her. I jumped one size ahead as I think she will be like growing grass over this winter; grow another few inches in no time! I still very much not like shopping for clothing! Sometimes, it is headache for me!

For me, I ordered this {print} for the dress that's on the book cover. These cotton chambray dobbies prints are very soft and so pretty in person as I have touched and seen them this summer. Then few Kona solid prints were check out as well! I am quiet excited about all the basic prints this time. That's all for me! I wasn't feeling greedy or ambitious getting all the prints that I have in my notebook as I think I was try to downsize what I have {giggle}!

My mind is pretty full lately with the quilt that I want to share with you soon and the story that I want to share and more! Everything is full in my head and heart! I still am working on that writing! Someday, I have wished I am a good writer, especially these days!

xxc