For some reason I've been making a lot of aprons lately, ever since I did the worth your while apron swap.  Her are some pictures of one I made from some linen I found at a thrift store and a Japanese tenugui dish towel.

I decided that it needed a sea creature on it to go with the wave pattern on the fabric.

I have gotten really obsessed lately with tenugui Japanese hand towels lately.  Here is a link to the wikipedia entry on them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenugui I bought this book about them at a little Japanese language bookstore in LA that has the most amazing pictures of them and random crafts and things to do with them.

http://www.amazon.co.jp/%E3%83%8F%E3%82%A4%E3%82%AB%E3%83%A9%E6%89%8B%E3%81%AC%E3%81%90%E3%81%84%E6%A1%88%E5%86%85-%E5%90%9B%E9%87%8E-%E5%80%AB%E5%AD%90/dp/4309280110/ref=sr_1_2/250-9065393-9649008?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1181237949&sr=1-2
They are 35 by 90cm cotton towels that are usually printed with really cute patterns.  Most of the patterns in this book are probably only available in Japan but I have found some I really like at some of the Marukai 98cent stores in LA.  
Here are some dish towels I made from cutting up and piecing together different prints.  



And here is an apron that I made for the owl swap round 4 that my partner received already so I think It's ok to post pictures here.  The bottom pockets part is made from a tenugui with tons of little owls printed on it.  I actually made a yellow one first that I decided I loved so much I couldn't give it up so I made a green one for my swap partner.  

I have made a few other things using tenugui but mostly bags and other non housewares things.  They are definitely great for making kitchen stuff though because they are so absorbant and easy to clean.  

I made this octopus screen using the faux screen printing meathod http://community.livejournal.com/craftgrrl/3674467.html but I'm not sure I like how it turned out.  

I used the octopus from the center of the drawing I made for this print

I made in a screen printing class but since I was using the faux meathod at home I could only use one color.  I'm not sure if I chose the right areas to be red vs. white.  What do you guy think?

My boyfriend and I just moved into a new apartment and I finally finished setting up my craft stuff.  At first we had been looking for a two bedroom so that we could have a separate crafting room for me/office for him but that ended up being out of our price range in the area where we wanted to live.  

So we got this one bedroom that I love but it has very little storage or wall space to put dressers or storage bins.  My boyfriend had this closet door shoe holder from his old place that we didn't really have a place for at our new place but decided that hanging on the back of the bathroom door it made a great place to store and organize my fabric stash.

Here is is in relation to my tiny sewing nook.

I like being able to see my fabric and have it close at hand without being in the way.

This is a zipper pouch I made as one present for my mom for mother's day.  

I faux screen printed the whales onto the fabric using this meathod
http://community.livejournal.com/craftgrrl/3674467.html
I had wanted to use this screen to make printed fabric, inspired by NOCHI's really cute whale fabric she printed but it's too tedious with the little screen I made to try to line it up and print it over and over again.  SO i just printed it twice, once for each side of the bag.

Oh and here is the inside, it's a traditional Japanese pattern that I think looks like either waves or fish scales.

Earlier I posted pictures of a dodo screen print I had done on some dish towels.  I mentioned that I had thought about making a whole series of prints of extinct flightless birds.  I finally made a screen of the second one, a moa.  Moas were giant, up to 12 feet tall, flightless birds that were native to New Zealand.  

Next I think I'll make a great auk.  It was a kind of penguiny looking bird that is related to the puffin that was native to the north atlantic.  
I also made a screen of lots of little whales that I'm planning on printing patterend fabric with.  I think printing it just once on a t-shirt is pretty cute too.

This is a zipper pouch I made last night.  I silk screened the owls on the front and it is lined with cute Japanese owl fabric.

close up of the owls

owls on the inside

oh and I'm proud of the zipper.  It's my first time using the zipper foot on my sewing machine

Ever since I bought my sewing machine I've been afraid of zippers. I guess it's because one of my good friends who is a really great sewer and has been sewing forever hates putting in zippers and the fact that the sewing machine comes with a separate "zipper foot." It just sounds intimidating. I had bought all these really cheep crazy colored zippers at the 98cent store though and wanted to use them. I decided to try it with some random scrap fabric and it really wasn't so bad. I didn't even use the zipper foot. I can see how it might be helpful though because the sewing machine foot didn't want to get a close to the zipper as I would have liked.

This is what I made with random bits of scrap fabric (polka dots, owls and kittys). It makes a good pencil case. The zipper is a little bit wonky but it was my first zipper.

Here are the kittys and my paint brushes on the inside.

The other thing I had been meaning to try was machine applique.



I probably should have chosen an easier shape like say a circle for my first machine applique but it turned out pretty well. Then I hand embroidered the mouth, eye and little spout that you can't really see.

This zipper turned out better than the first one. I'm kind of getting the hang of it.

This is a card that I made for my boyfriend for valentines day.  It's a slug with a slime trail saying "I love you."  I painted it with watercolors.

Here is another wristlet I made, influenced by the laurasaurus pleated clutch tutorial.  I had to buy this fabric at superbuzzy.  It was too expensive but I knew it would be gone fast.  

The elephants are way too cute

The button is an extra button I got with a sweater that was on sale at Anthropology.