Jaden's 1st Birthday

My friends, Jim and Yeni, have the most adorable and chubby child, Jaden.  He's a total sweetheart because the first sound that came out of his mouth after I asked him how was my cooking? Jaden at nine months old with his mouth full and a big happy grin said "MMMMM -MMMMMM".  Right there and then I knew he belonged in my foodie circle.

Jaden is celebrating his first birthday tomorrow and his mother asked me to make some traditional Korean items for his dol, doljanchi or tol, toljiabee, where his mother will put several different objects and he will choose one of these items up, and supposedly it will predict the child's future profession in life:

a large spool of thread = long life

book & pencil = good scholar

computer mouse = computer programmer aka Microsoft, because his father works there

stethoscope = doctor

gravel = lawyer/judge

I had a lot of help from my friend Evelyn who I sew with every Friday, and we were able to construct everything in one day. Jaden's birthday theme color is blue and yellow, thus all the toys were made with blue and yellow felt. We even had some blue and yellow polka dot felt that we incorporate into the plush toys.

Luckily it was one of those rare warm and sunny days in Seattle and I was able to shoot these photos.

Here is spool and thread with a lucky knot and his initial, J

His little book

Stethoscope, my friend Chara, came up with this great way to make the stethoscope more obvious.  She said to embroider "Dr. J" on it and now it looks more doctorly, don't you think?

With the gravel, I kept it simple and ended up embroidering the polka dots to give it more texture. 

Pencil with "No. 1" to celebrate his first birthday

Here's his pencil and book with the first page having the number one to celebrate his first birthday. I think next year I will make a number "2" page to add to his book and so forth, and hopefully he will have a cute number book where he can learn his numbers later on.

and finally the computer mouse with his initial, J

surprisingly I ended up liking this photo the best, because the mouse looks like a cute little fat mouse's butt, tee hee

I'm pretty sure whatever Jaden will choose tomorrow, he will have a successful career because he's such a cute, smart kid!

Pretty Pillows

I'm slowly phasing out pastel colors into more bold colors in my living room.  Currently it's more light teal, yellow and pink and now I'm adding more blacks, deeper teal, red and gold and hopefully purple into the mix.  Here are some pillows that I made yesterday with My folklore by Lecien.

I love the little details on this fabric. So many wonderful and cute details to look at!  Here's a close up of the little horses, birds and flowers

Lazy...

I think I ran into a hump or is it a lump (I feel like a lump right now sitting on the couch), where I am just lazy and unmotivated to do anything, even <gasp> cook!  Well actually the only thing I have been doing lately is hand quilting an incredibly large king size quilt that I started almost two weeks ago and now in the stage of hand quilting, but I'm almost done - maybe two more hours and I will be done! Woohoo!  It's so big that I can't properly spread the quilt completely out.  The quilt probably has eleven or twelve yards of fabric, not including the batting, just the front and back!  I had to go to my friend's, Evelyn, house and baste the quilt. I have to admit it, I am in love with it. It's colorful and so happy. I smile whenever I touch and look at it.

The fabric line is from Anna Maria Horner's Little Folk and it's voile cotton. I can't tell you how pleasurable and soft this fabric is. I wish I had enough to make a blouse.  The colors are just beautiful and it's buttery soft.  Sorry for the fuzziness of this pic.  I took this with my Windows 7 phone, the Samsung Focus.  Here they are laid out so I can reorganize and sew them together. They actually did not end up looking like the below pic.




I can't wait to show you the quilt when it is all finished. The binding fabric is all picked out, it just need to be cut and sew together. I'm getting giddy just thinking about it :)