The third swap I shipped out last week was for an awesome Birthday Swap I am in all year. Each month has a birthday girl and all the people in the group send a package to that person. January’s recipient is a big Studio Ghibli fan so I made this little JiJi the cat mini quilt and some other fun Ghibli-inspired goodies.

Jiji is the cat in Kiki’s Delivery Service, which is such a cute movie. I am a big Ghibli fan too, so I had a great time with this one.

The pink background fabric reminded me of Japanese fans and the flowers on the back of Cherry Blossoms. They’re like hints of Japan without being overly Japanese I guess. I also really like the bright color contrasting with the black cat.

As an additional project I used the Silhouette machine to cut vinyl and make this mug to look like the one in the movie. I think it is a pretty good homage to the movie. I added the outline of Kiki and Jiji on the broom to the back and couldn’t resist a little Soot Sprite on the bottom. (I made a couple extra Soot Sprites and now they’re on my sewing machine.)

And finally, I made a Tortoro zip pouch. The fabric is from Spoonflower. I had some left from a Ghibli Swap last year, and I used the Noodlehead Wide Open Pouch tutorial, which makes a great little travel pouch. The bottom portion is navy linen and it is even lined.

I rounded out the extras with a Totoro Polaroid block, since the birthday girl was also in the Polaroid swap I did a couple months ago, a Kiki’s Delivery service Key Fob and some birthday cake gum.