Sewing for bazaars

Yesterday we had a Patchwork Thursday and my friends and I worked on little things for the upcoming hospital bazaar (where Mrs. Furui is a volunteer).  With not much time given to make things, we concentrated on sewing the little bears that I have shown before.  During the past two weeks Mrs. Furui and I made over 30 of them and yesterday my friends stuffed and sewed them together and then we hot bonded little badge clasps to the back.  It was an excellent carry along project (all hand sewing) and 32 mini-bears used up two bags of left-over batting pieces!!!  Yeah!

The whole den of bears ready for the bazaar.

 

Mrs. Ochiai was busy this past week making these adorable strap decorations.  Can you tell what these are?

 

They are little plastic Le Creuset bobbles that Mrs. Ochiai said her daughter collected every time they bought a Pepsi. Do you know what Le Creuset is?  It is a French made iron pot that is quite popular in Japan and very expensive.  I'd love to have a big heavy Le Creuset pot but I can't afford one.   (Don't ask my why Pepsi was offering plastic Le Creuset bobbles).  The original Pepsi bobbles were hanging from a rubber band so Mrs. Ochiai did some of her famous Chinese knotting and made these into very fancy strap decorations. 

 

And Mrs. Okutomi came this month (she lives quite far away... come to think of it, so does Mrs. Harada) and she finished the machine quilting for this year's kindergarten bazaar quilt.  Very colorful isn't it!  A lot of people helped to make all the trees and houses.  For sure none of us would ever want to make this quilt as a solo project.  Some of those trees were really detailed!!!

 

Mrs. Okutomi did a fantastic job of quilting this and thanks to her we are way ahead of our deadline.  (The kindergarten bazaar is at the end of next month).

 

Here are a few of us modeling in front of the quilt ala American teenage girl pose. This year while in the States I noticed how all the high school girls (my niece and her friends) posed for pictures.

"Okay everyone.  Hands on hip and suck in that tummy!  Turn your body to a slimming angle aligned with the camera.  Push out that bust.  SMILE!"

This is so out of character for my quilting friends.

 

I had to add this last picture to show how embarrassed and hilarious we found this (and I stopped sucking in my stomach.)