Happy Lunar New Year!

Today is the first day of the Lunar New Year and it's starting to be a super long 2 days of visitation to relatives and friends' houses with good food and lots of conversation and traveling to do.

My house is more of less 'dressed' up for the occasions with the seasonal festive decorations to spice up the mood here.

Here's what my girl did with her father a few days ago.

Fire Crackers

 Fire Crackers! 2 strings of them.

We used Red paper packets and roll them up, stapled them and punch hole to string them together. Rather than buying them off the shelves, we thought making them with our kids will help them to enjoy the festival more.

Beautiful Red packets

They also made some fishes...

see the little golden fish swing inside the big fish? love the details

this one got a red fish inside

And different kinds of lanterns!

And what is the festive without the Mandarin Oranges! Lots of them brings in the colors.  The fruit basket is from Ikea.

Remember those placemats? Sigh..now My house is ready to welcome the guests. Come come...

Have a very Happy Lunar New Year and Happy holidays!

Colour Block Skirts

I had plans for dresses for my girls and me in this coming Lunar New Year, but time was against me so I made 3 skirts instead. It was quite fast as I've some solid color fabric and did some simple calculations and cut up the fabric. I more or less copy the idea from Pinterest which I thought was cute and simple.

Mustard Yellow and Turquoise blue for the older girl.

Mustard Yellow and Tangerine Orange for the little one.

Tangerine Orange and Earthly Brown for me.

I made all 3 skirts in 2 nights  - one for cutting the fabric and the other for sewing them up. It's quite simple and I only use every little fabric.

I'm a little busy right now cause tomorrow is the Lunar New Year! It's a very important celebration for the Chinese so I've got lots of spring cleaning to do. I'll share the skirt tutorial in my next or next next post : P.

New PJs for 2012

Last week I finally finish making the PJs for my 2 girls.  It's my desire to make a new PJ for my girls every year for Lunar New Year so that they can keep this tradition with them. My mum bought/sew us PJs when we were young and I had fond memories of these PJs and the excitement to wear them on the eve of the Lunar New Year.

The pattern is from this Japanese sewing book for kids. This book is really good and I've previously made a dress for my girl from it.  There are other patterns that I've bookmarked to sew when I've the time.

I made the pants set for my 2nd girl using a vintage car prints cotton fabric that I got from Spotlight recently. 

I bind the neckline, sleeve, pocket and pants hem with royal blue bias tape that I made myself.  

It was a little too big for her but she was very happy to wear them and didn't want to take them off! I love the car prints on the 2 little pockets that I've placed in front.  The car print on the pocket is cut deliberately to be right in the centre and both are facing the opposite direction.  

For my older girl, I made a dress PJ with the fabric that she picked out herself. The fabric has pretty pink stripes and small flower prints. I also sew some handmade bias tapes at the neckline and sleeve.

I've sewn 3 colorful butterfly buttons in front and grosgrain ribbon at the waist area. The area below the ribbon was slightly gathered. I just discovered how to sew buttons using my Singer sewing machine with the special button foot! Ha...

I've painstakingly cut the front fabric and then match the print to the back fabric so that they meet at the side seams nicely.

Another success project cause she was very happy with it! Yeah! : ) She jump onto her bed immediately and pose some funny picture for me. 

The little sister also jumped onto her bed and they had a cozy time together before she took off her PJ, unwillingly. 

I told them that they will get to wear them again on the eve of Lunar New Year which is coming this Monday!   Till then, I've some more last minute sewing going on so come back soon and I will have a tutorial soon...