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Japanese Fabric Love

folklore

I have a bit of an obsession with Japanese things.  Like everyone, we’ve been trying to save money around here but I couldn’t resist this fabric from Superbuzzy.  It’s for sundresses that I think the girls will wear all summer, so I wanted similar but not matching fabrics that I could stand to look at often.  These are from one of my all-time favorite fabric collections, Lecien’s My Folklore.  More and more shops are carrying Japanese fabrics, including the popular Kokka and Echino by Etsuko Furuya.

Here are some shops that specialize in Japanese fabric and craft supplies:

Fabricworm: lots of Japanese fabric, plus other designer fabrics.

From Japan with Love: Etsy shop with a huge selection of stickers, stamps, fabric and notions.  They also have a yahoo shop here with even more stuff.

good-ness: Etsy shop featuring books, fabric, stamps, gocco supplies, etc.

Karaku: Etsy shop with fabric, stamps and paper goods.

Kitty-Craft: books, fabric, supplies.

Matatabi: Etsy shop with fabric and twill tape.

nuno plus: fabric, bags, craft supplies.

Pomadour’s Craft Cafe: fabric, books, other Japanese stuff.

Superbuzzy: fabric, notions, supplies, etc.

Plus Reprodepot Fabrics, J. Caroline Creative, Purl and Bee Square Fabrics have a large selection of Japanese fabric, among others.


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Winner of Baby Giveaway

Well, we’re not giving away a baby!  I loved hearing about the deserving little ones in your lives.  I also enjoyed reading so many inspiring stories about overcoming infertility and choosing adoption.  It’s never easy to have a baby — so here’s to you, Mamas and Papas of the world!

The winner of the baby goods giveaway is comment #32 submitted by Jen of Desert Juniper.  Congratulations!  Be sure to visit the inspiring shops of our excellent Etsy sellers:

little sapling toys
strawberryluna
sweetbeets
coco + milkweed

random1

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All you need is love…and cupcakes.

vegan-cupcake

Happy Valentine’s Day!  I made these vegan chocolate cupcakes from Chow that I posted about earlier this week.  The basic chocolate cupcake recipe is excellent and you could fool anyone with this.  This recipe was given the kid stamp of approval!  I used dark cocoa powder.

I made the icing recipe suggested with some beet juice added for color (you can’t taste it and it’s natural).  I would recommend adding some other flavoring to it as it needed something — maybe peppermint, lemon, chocolate or the sandwich cookies they offer as an option.  You can also see that it didn’t come out silky smooth, but my icing piping thinga-ma-jig isn’t working, so that might have helped.

I love these cards from some e cards.  They totally fit my cynical sense of humor.

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Sheep Wall Hanging

sheep-wall-hanging

Here is a little gift for a one-year-old.  Not very exciting to her as she can’t chew it, but I think it turned out to be sweet.  I’m planning to make more of these wall hangings and might sell them.  My daughter has a project that she’s been working on that has pushed me to try to do some local selling with her.  I can’t squash a six-year-old’s entrepreneurial spirit!  More details soon.