Alhamdulillah...thanks so much, mbak Ina :)

This is the sequel of my previous post.

So, I received a package on Monday. Reading that the sender is mbak Ina of Feathering a Nest, I impatiently opened the big envelope. Tadaa, a pretty pouch bag

My Very First Craft Swap

It was started when I was expressing my admiration on a craft swap made by mbak Ina Kusumastuti for another crafter.

When mbak Ina asked me to do a craft swap as well, I was so excited. It's an honor to be asked by a fine seamstress and talented crafter, an artist like her. I was also a bit nervous, because I'm afraid my creation wouldn't met her expectation, it's my first craft swap after all. So it took quite a while for me to finish it, because I kept changing my project.

Anyway, it's done now, alhamdulillah .

The theme of our craft swap is "something that tells story".
Everyone who knows me, knows that I have a thing with fairy tales and double (or multi) functions bag. So this time, I was inspired by one of my favourite fairy tales, which is Alice in the Wonderland. I took the character of Queen of Hearts to represents it.

Why her?
Despite of her being mean, I find her funny, a bit gothy and the most glamorous character (she's a queen, obviously ). And I thought her colors, black, white and red, was a very good color combination. Thus, she likes roses, which I thought a popular flower and will be very pretty on ribbon embroidery. The roses also were telling a hope, that my friendship with mb Ina will blooming like the pretty flowers, that our silaturrahim will last forever, insha Allah .

So, I drew The Queen of Hearts on fabric, cut it and stitched it to the bag, embellished it with beads and ribbon embroidery roses. The bag itself is a simple tote, which can be worn as a sling bag or a clutch.

You can wear it like this...

My purchase this week

I bought some of my supplies online, for sometimes I cannot find the things I need for my creations in my town.
Most of them are MP shops, but recently I found a shop in E-bay who sells many cute fabric & quilt blocks. Mind you, I love Indonesian batik and traditional fabric, it's just sometimes a crafter needs variations .
So, the shop I was talking about is Grandma's Sewing Room Stash, located in US. I managed to purchase one panel of 33 Fairy quilt blocks and won a bid at the same shop for a panel of 9 Boutique Items quilt blocks, which I thought would be perfect for my pouch projects.

I've already made stitches on some of these small blocks (Grrr...can't wait to finish 'em all!)

Try my hand on drawing (again)

Drawing is my hobby when I was very young. My father was an architect, drawing tools were cluttered around the house so it's easy for me to got influenced (apparently it wasn't only me, later on my brother become a graphic designer). Funny thing was, I only drew with markers, I wasn't interested in other notions.

But I stopped drawing since, I think, around 3rd or 4th grade. My hobby was shifted to writing. I wrote teenlits, poetry, etc (but never got them published though, my readers were all my close friends ). When I got older, when I was at high school, I stopped writing because of my extra activities at school, namely acting class, discussion group, choir, joining a band & vocal lesson. At college I was even more busier, juggling between study and part time job as a radio DJ.

And now, I got interested in drawing again, since my collaboration with mb Puri on Calyx products got a good response at the Inacraft. They were mb Puri's drawings on fabric, so I just curious to try my own. A bit rusty though ...
These are meant to be on the new batch of Calyx Multi Function Backpack.

Alice's fall to the rabbit hole

Corsage Craze

Some of you might have noticed that I'm crazy for corsage right now.
I searched the net for the tute, found some that I think simple & interesting.
So, below are my results of learning to make corsages. Apologize for the poor quality of the pictures, they were taken with a cell phone camera because hubby left the camera in his office (again), sigh...