House of 66 and Okinawa Memory Quilt

I love this picture of the girls!  Such little Diva's!

 So the girls and I went to a local fabric store, called House of 66, with a new friend to get some fabric for a project I am working on.  It is called an Okinawa Memory Quilt.  If you want an idea what they look like then just google it and a few examples pop up for you to see.  In the group that I am in, I think there are like 25 of us, each one of us does the same square (25 times).  Then when all the squares are due, we bring our squares we worked on and swap with the other women.  Then you have 25 different squares to make up your quilt.

Each of the squares represents something special to do specifically with Okinawa/Japan.  One gal is doing the ferris wheel at American Village, another is doing a Torii gate, another sushi... you get the idea.  The square I am doing is a Taiko Drum.  This was on my "HAVE TO DO list" for while we are here and the timing worked out perfectly that a group of gals from church were just starting one up so I jumped at the chance to participate.

We meet every Tuesday at my friend Jessica's house and we can work on them all together.  Especially great for someone like me who doesn't have sewing supplies, I can go and use theirs and get help when I am stuck on something.  The squares aren't due until February, but I am going to balls to the walls mine so I can get it done before the baby is done cooking so I am not having to worry about getting my squares done with a newborn and two busy girls.

Once I have all the squares, it will be up to me to finish them off altogether into the actual quilt.  Which I can work on here if I want or I can save to work on for later.  I just LOVE this idea because in the end I will have this quilt where each square is done by one of my new friends.  What a treasure to have!

 So this is my fabric look that I ended up with.  The khaki colored fabric will be my background, the red with flowers will be the body of the drum, the white will be the tops of the drum and the brown will be the drumsticks.  I had SO MUCH FUN looking around at all the wonderful fabrics.  They had some really beautiful Japanese fabrics that made me want to find more projects to do!

Luckily my friend that came and helped me, Jessica, was great with numbers and helping me to figure out how much I needed of what.  I am pretty numbers retarded so it was SO helpful to have someone there to bounce everything off of.

 These receipts just crack me up because seeing money in yen makes me feel like I am spending millions of dollars.  Like my one total was 1,223 and my other one was 3,800.  They had the fabric split up between two stores that are by each other so you kinda had to bop between the two to figure out what you wanted, then get the stuff you wanted at the one store and then back to the first store.

 I just love this bag "shop with confidence".  I guess the House of 66 Cents name has something to do with the yen-dollars conversion rate from WAY long time ago and even though the conversion rate is totally different, this is still the name of the store.

 These are the two drums that I basing my design off of.  I like the boldness of the color of the first drum, but liked the finishing and the drumsticks of the second drum.  So I am kinda combing the two styles to come up with my own print.

Tomorrow I plan on getting the background squares cut out and the design figured out for the drum and then next week I can start sewing my brains out for reals.  I am so excited for this opportunity and the chance to help be a part of something that will be truly beautiful.