Crazy Crafting

I love a good sewing or craft project.  Here are a few of the things that I have come up with lately.  Thanks to Pinterest, I have a lot more available for craft ideas :)

Several weeks, or maybe a month ago now, when I made Zoe's little bear hat, I made several other flowers to make headbands with.  A couple of weeks ago I was finally able to purchase some elastic at a market in a refugee camp (not the only place to purchase elastic, but I was there so I got it).  I was able to put these flowers on headbands.

I can't wait for her to wear them!  Also, in a recent package from my amazing cousin, Laura, I got some really cute fabric.  We had some friends recently leave the country, and in getting rid of things, they gave me their hard baby wipes case.  Surprisingly, I have not been able to find any hard baby wipes cases here.  The case they gave me was blue, so the fabric my cousin sent me was perfect for it!

I covered the case and made a little bag for diapers and things.  I want to make a changing blanket out of this fabric also, so they will all match, but I need to head down to the market and try to find some batting or interfacing to use with it.

On Pinterest, I found this really cute shoe tutorial.  After I made the earlier headband, I realized it matched the onesie I made before we knew if little Zoe was going to be a boy or a girl, so I decided it needed to make her some little matching shoes to complete the outfit!

The whole outfit

Aren't the little shoes so cute?  They may be a little big for her when the rest of the outfit fits her, but oh well, it was a learning experience and they're still cute.

Finally, several weeks ago, I worked on this little project for Zoe.  Baby bassinets are so expensive and in all likelihood she would not be able to sleep in one for very long because she will be so long.  So, rather than go out and buy a bassinet we might be able to use for a month or so, we decided to improvise and make something ourselves.

We purchased a laundry basket (a surprisingly difficult find here, most laundry baskets are the round ones or oddly shaped).  I then drew up a diagram and Andrew took it down to our pillow guy, who made a little mattress and bumper for it.  He knew straight away what it was, and we got to learn the Arabic words for those things as well.  Once we got those back from him, I made little covers for everything and voila!

I know, the pillow is a bit ridiculous, but he made it, so I made a little case for it, and it looks cute in there for now.

The pillow man didn't exactly follow my dimensions, so it's not quite as good of a fit as I would like, but all things considered, I think it turned out pretty well.  It will be nice to have in the beginning.  There is no extra space in our bedroom for a bigger bed, and we'll be able to tote her around the house if we need to :)

Well, I believe I am officially all caught up on my crafts as of late.  Hope you enjoyed it!

Baby Bear Hat

Another blog about something I made for little Zoe.  I saw this adorable little crochet hat on Pinterest and decided I had to try to make it.  I was a bit nervous that I wouldn't be able to do it.  The only things I've been able to successfully crochet are flowers which come from a book with a picture diagram, I have not been able to get a handle on the written instructions for crochet.  But, I decided to try to give this one a shot since it was so cute.  Some parts were quite confusing, but I finally got the hang of it!  I think it turned out very cute and I can't wait for little Zoe to wear it!  I made this hat to fit a newborn, but it gives instructions for sizes up to 36 months, so who knows, maybe I'll make her another one.

I really love the flower on this, it's unlike any I have made before.

Knit Squares

I have been working on a baby blanket for our little Wheat.  I bought the yarn before we knew if we were having a boy or a girl.  At that time, I really thought we were going to be having a little boy, so I tried to buy fairly gender neutral colors then if it was a girl I could put some flowers on it to make it more girly.  I do love the colors, especially since little Zoe will be born in the fall, the colors are perfect for that time of year.

So, I used 9 colors and made 9 rows of 9 squares per row.  It took a good bit of time to knit all the squares and then piece them all together, but I think it turned out great.  It is a pretty simply blanket, but since it has so many colors in it, it makes it look a lot more complex than it really is.  

Starting to piece together the squares

Crochet flowers on knit blanket

I didn't really get a picture of the whole blanket, but this is a good chunk of it.

Boppy

Living overseas tends to make you a little bit more resourceful.  We don't have everything available to us that we did in the States, and even if it is available, it is usually outrageously expensive.  In the States, it seems that a common staple for new moms is a Boppy pillow.  I have seen similar pillows over here, but they are not quite as big and they are quite expensive still.  So, I decided to make my own!  On Pinterest, I found this tutorial for making a slip cover for your Boppy pillow.  I thought to myself, I can just make this cover and take it to the pillow man down the street and get him to fill it up for me.  It might not be exactly the same, but it should be good enough and I won't even know the difference.

So, I purchased my fabric in the souq, costing me roughly $1.25 for a meter.  I decided to make another as a gift, so I ended up buy two matching fabrics to make a double sided Boppy.  I printed out the pattern I found on that website and got to work.

Here are my two cut and sown fabrics

Andrew and I walked down the street to our pillow guy.  He was obviously from a village or something because his Arabic was incredibly difficult to understand, but we left the pillow cases with him and a few hours later Andrew went and picked them up.  It cost us approximately $5.

The finished products

I am pretty pleased with the results.  I am sure it is not the same as a real Boppy pillow, but I won't know the difference and this one only cost us about $6.25 rather than the $40 it would cost for the real deal.  This is the actual pillow, so if it gets dirty you can't really wash it in the washer, but I am thinking maybe I'll make a slipcover for this pillow.  I don't know yet, we'll see.

Belly

I just realized that I have not posted any of my belly pictures on my blog yet.  Sorry to those who don't have facebook and only see my blog.  Here are the belly pictures we have taken so far :)

at 12 Weeks

at 14 Weeks

Taken today at 16 Weeks

Here I am practicing with my newly made carrier.  I got the idea off of pinterest from this site.  She added a panel to the front, which I may do later once we find out what our little Wheat is going to be!

Speaking of finding out genders, I will be going back to the doctor this week and I am hoping that we'll be able to find out then what our little Wheat is.  I know that 16 weeks is early, and usually in the States they don't look until around 20 weeks.  But since we do an ultrasound at every visit, maybe we'll be able to see!  I am really hoping so, but trying not to get my hopes up too much.  A big part of me fears that they won't be able to see clearly yet, but they'll go ahead and tell me it's a boy because in this culture everyone wants a boy.  I will be thrilled with a boy or a girl, but I just don't want to be told a boy and go crazy buying and making things for a boy only to find out a month later that it's really a girl.

That's all for now, but hopefully later this week we may be posting back with it's a boy or a girl! :)

Infinity Scarf

This past week I have been working on some product samples for the co-op here that I lead a sewing training for during Ramadan.  There is a company in the States that is interested in buying large quantities of their sewing line, but they needed to send them some samples.  So, this week I have been busy making some samples for them.  I have found it rather challenging to make cute things out of old clothes.  The guy in charge of the co-op, really likes for the products to still look like clothes, which I am not a huge fan of.  But somehow I made due and I am pretty pleased with the results.  This is not everything, but just a couple of things that I liked.

A headband for a little girl.  Ruffles made from old T-shirts

An owl made from old cashmere sweaters

With all this sewing that I wasn't too big a fan of, I needed to make something I thought was cute.  I have seen a lot online about infinity scarves.  It's hard to find cute fabric here, and it's definitely hard to find long pieces of cute fabric.  So, I decided a patchwork infinity scarf made from pieces of fabric I already had from the States would  be cute.  Finished it up yesterday and I think it turned out pretty cute.

And, here's a bonus picture that needed to be posted because I think I look exactly like my mother in this picture.

Kinda freaky huh?  Like mother like daughter...

Next week, (this Friday) Andrew and I are heading to Kenya!  I'm pretty excited about going, it's going to be a lot cooler there, so my new scarf will be great :)  Also we'll have some good pictures to show when we get back.  We're heading to Kenya on a retreat and then on our way back we're stopping off in another country where we hope to move to next year.  We're going to scout the place out, so keep us in your "thoughts" over the next couple of weeks and keep checking back for new pictures and updates on how things went :)

Craft Time!

Since my sewing class, I have been feeling very craftsy (I'm not sure the right adjective to use, it's not crafty is it...).  I have also newly discovered a great website, Pinterest.  A friend from college told me about it, and I have barely been able to pull myself away from it since.  It's got so many great ideas of how to do things and helps you keep up with all of your craft ideas.  It is especially great since I am living overseas and if I want anything cute, I've got to make it myself.

Enough with all the prelude, here's some of the stuff I've been making lately.

Sorry not the best lighting.  Here are two pillows that I made for our bedroom.  The bigger one was inspired from here.  I really love the ruffles and I think it looks like something you could easily buy in a store somewhere.  The smaller pillow was inspired from here.  The blue fabric I used was extra that I had from our curtains, so the pillow really ties in the whole room.  Not quite as professional looking because you can see some of the hot glue that I used on the flowers, but I still love it! 

I have been on a bit of pillow kick lately because they are just so cute, really make a place homey and yours and most importantly because they are quick to sew so you get immediate results.  I have thoughts for more pillows to come, but I really need to figure out where in town they sell stuffing for pillows.

I finished a project today that I have been excited about for a week or so.  I have been wanting to make a wreath for our door, but, since no one here has ever even heard of a wreath, it's been a bit of a struggle to get the supplies needed.  It has been and adventure, and we've been in stores and in parts of town that we've never been before so that has been a good thing as well :)

Since I can't just run to Hobby Lobby and buy a wreath foam, I had to find another route to go.  Thankfully I found this idea online.  So today Andrew and his local friend headed off to a hardware store to buy some kind of plumbing foam. I cut it to the length I wanted and duck taped the ends together to make a circle.  Worked out pretty good!  But I was just so excited that our small town had this particular plumbing foam.

The inspiration for my wreath came from here.  When I saw it, I fell absolutely in love!  People here don't have wreathes and everyone in my building will probably think I'm the crazy white lady now, but oh well.  I love it and it makes it feel more like home to me :)  There are fabric rosettes on the bottom of my wreath.  Because the plumbing foam is not quite as strong as a Hobby Lobby wreath foam, it was sagging quite a bit. To help with the sagging, I tied a ribbon around the bottom of the circle and the top.  Since the ribbon is behind my bow, it is not so visible.  Either way, it is better than a sagging wreath.

So, here it is!  I love it!

Sorry the last one is on it's side.  Also, there are no door wreath hangers here, so I had to improvise.  I put a nail on the top inside of the door, and ran a ribbon up over the door and tied it to the nail.  I think it works pretty nicely.

So, what do you guys think?  I have the prettiest door in the whole building? :)

Here are just some bonus pictures of Andrew and I:

Test!

Today was my last day teaching my sewing class.  I have really enjoyed my time with the ladies, and I will miss it dearly, but I have plans to still go by and sew with them once a week.  Yesterday, I gave the ladies a "Final Exam."  I brought in two things that I made at home and they had to choose one and make it without my help.  I brought in a pieced pillow, fairly simple and straightforward, but we hadn't made pillows yet, so it was new.  I put a button on the back as a closure and varied my stitches on the top stitches of the pieced front.  The second item I brought in was a small purse messenger bag style.  We have already made messenger bags and totes, so they knew how to make a bag, but we had never made one this small and I appliquéd a flower on the front, using the stitch we learned when making bracelets.

Two of the ladies chose to go the easy route and make the pillow.  They pieced it together nicely, but failed to put a button enclosure on the back and kept the same zig zag stitch for all the top stitching.  The pillows turned out nicely and looked good, but I was a little disappointed that they didn't take advantage of an easy assignment and really go all the way with it.  But they sewed it and it looked good.

One girl chose to make the purse and I was so proud of her.  She chose to make it out of jeans and even appliquéd a flower on the front.  She is very good at following instructions and recreating something exactly, but hopefully once she becomes comfortable with her sewing, she will venture out and change things up and make them her own.  She was disappointed with her appliquéd flower, but I thought it was very cute and one of a kind.

Because she wasn't as pleased as she wanted to be, she made another one today.  Pretty much the same concept, but the flower turned out better.

Since my students were so good this month, learned so much and became great seamstresses, I thought I would give them a little treat today.  Since it's Ramadan, I couldn't bring in any actual treats like sweets, since that would just be torture because they couldn't eat them until sunset, so I opted to make them something.  I got the tutorial from here, I think these clutch bags are so cute.  I hope they like them, I think they at least liked the gesture.

Well, it's been fun teaching, and it has definitely got my creative juices going.  I have a lot of little projects that I want to make, so hopefully I'll follow through with them :)  One that I've already finished is a checker board for my friend Jamie and I to play on while our husbands are busy playing Chess.

Courtesy of Quilting Arts Digital Magazines

Pieced Messenger Bag

For the past two days, the ladies have been working on a pieced messenger bag.  They spent most of yesterday piecing together the fabrics for the bag and today they mostly spent putting the bag together.  I think it turned out amazing!  I am so proud of them.  They do not need too much instruction anymore, but since this was a new bag, they needed a little help here and there, but they picked up the concept quickly.

After they finished their bag, we sat around a little and talked about all that we have made so far, what is good about them and what we need to watch out for next time we're making something like that.  It was good.  While we were discussing all the things we have done and weather they were difficult or easy, the ladies asked if they were being tested, so I took the opportunity to inform them that I am actually going to give them a test on Saturday (the next day we meet).  We have two more days to meet, Saturday and Sunday.  Saturday I am going to bring in something new that they have not made yet and they'll have to make it without my help (at least I'm not going to tell them exactly how to make it).  They will have two days to complete it, but maybe they will get it finished in just one day and our last day will be a fun day to make our favorite thing or something.

So, I'm going to make something this weekend to bring in for their test.  Something fairly easy that they should be able to recreate on their own.  I still have no clue what I am going to make.  Any suggestions?

Wristlets and Bracelets

Today we finished up our wristlets we started on Wednesday.  They turned out nicely although a couple of the ladies had their liner in upside down so the pockets opened to the bottom.  They had to take it out and redo it, but hopefully it was a learning experience.

After we finished up the wristlets, I gave them the option of going ahead and starting on another wristlet (because I think they need to make another one to reinforce the new skills they learned), or make bracelets and make more wristlets tomorrow.  They opted to make the bracelets.  I thought these cloth fabric bracelets were so cute, but unfortunately their since of design and color coordination is not as great as could be desired.  I was excited to make bracelets because it is completely whatever the sewer wants it to be.  As wide or as narrow, whatever design you prefer.  So, of course, they cut out the size of their bracelet exactly the same size as the one I brought to show them.  One of the ladies freaked out and put as many pieces of fabric as possible on one bracelet, another lady just had one long strip of fabric, folded in half with interfacing inside as her bracelet.  My third girl, did a good job piecing together her fabric, and didn't use too many different kinds, but her color selection was horrible.  Oh well, at least they learned how to satin stitch and put in a button hole (a feat in and of itself; they have no concept of a practice button hole before you go stitching on your final product).  It was good for them to learn, and hopefully one day they will improve their design and color selection skills.

Patchwork Tote

When I came in today and told the ladies we were going to make patchwork totes, they were not excited about the idea.  When I told them that they could work together and just make one tote, they brightened up quite a bit.  By the end of the today's lesson, they were talking about bigger, messenger bags that they could make patchwork.  Today was the first day we worked with interfacing.  They also thought the interfacing made the bags much better, which I agree.  To quilt the patchwork onto the interfacing, we used a zig zag stitch.  They were excited to learn how to zig zag stitch, but they were completely scared of it.  They thought it was the most amazing, most difficult thing they have ever seen.  I think they were surprised to find it is really quite easy.  As they were working on the tote today, my heart just filled with pride at how far they have come in sewing.  They still need my help with problem solving, but they are beginning to figure out the smaller problems by themselves and need less and less assistance throughout the process.  While their patchwork is still not perfect, their bag today turned out so great and I would use it in a heartbeat :)

Drawstring Patchwork Bags

Today in sewing class we made these little drawstring patchwork bags.

 I thought they were really cute even though I'm not entirely sure what one would use them for; and it was a good second project for them to piece things together, actually doing patchwork this time.  The ladies seemed excited about it at first, but by the end of the class, I'm not sure they were as excited about it as they started out.  I think piecing all the patches together took more detail and time than they really wanted it to.  Yesterday while they made more tissue box covers, I cut out a bunch of the squares for them, so they didn't even have to deal with that today.  Tomorrow I had planned for us incorporate the patchwork with the totes we made before, to show them how you can patchwork anything if you don't have fabric big enough to make what you want (which will probably be the case for them since they are using recycled fabrics; aka old clothes).  At the mention of making a hand bag, they seemed exasperated thinking of all the work it would take to piece together that many squares.  Oh well...I'm the teacher and they do what I say :)  It'll be good for them too; what doesn't kill them will make them stronger :)

Tissue Box Covers

Today we made tissue box covers.  I thought it would be a good first step to learning to piece together fabrics.  Since the ladies will be using recycled (old and donated clothes most likely) fabric, the chances are, they will often not have pieces large enough to make things like bags.  I have been a little worried about my teaching style.  I don't really know how to teach sewing, as much as them just doing it and helping them along the way.  I learn best by doing, and apparently that's how I teach too.  I was a little worried that they would not learn that way, and need more instruction/lecture type teaching.  I could definitely not get away with that with my limited Arabic.  But I was pleased by the ladies sewing today.  I can definitely see improvement since our first project together.  They are definitely improving and learning.  At least I think they are improving, or it could have just been that I kept over emphasizing today how much they needed to sew straight in order for this to turn out right.  They did a great job and I am pleased with the results:

These are reversible tissue box covers.  When I brought my sample in for them to see, I have two totally different types of fabric on each side; one with spring colors and the other with fall.  The ladies did the exact same fabric on both sides of their covers.  A little disappointing since they need to be working on their creativity.  One lady wanted to do the whole thing in just one color, thankfully about halfway through cutting out her fabric, she decided to do two colors.  At least their colors do go nicely together today, so there is some improvement there too :)

Flowers

Today in class we finished up the totes that we started yesterday.  We had our first broken needle, which I got to replace for the first time in my life.  They thought it was the most brilliant idea to use a coin to help unscrew the screw keeping the needle in place.  I got the new needle in with no problems so that was a relief :)  After we finished up the totes, we made flowers.  They were pretty excited that there were different kinds of flowers to make.  They kept thinking we were just going to make one kind.  I wasn't picking up on everything they were saying to each other, but I heard lots of comments being thrown out about where you could put/use/wear the flowers.

Sewing Class Totes

For the past two days this week, we have been working on making tote bags.  The ladies are really grasping the concept of how fabrics fit together to make something, the problem is, so far, they are not too keen on doing all the little details that make something really look nice and put together, like ironing creases, measuring seams and sewing straight lines :)  I am struggling with how to reinforce the need for details with my limited Arabic.  I started out by trying to correct them when they started to skip a detailed step but they didn't really want to listen.  Now I have moved to letting them make the mistake by skipping something, then showing them how it doesn't look good and they have to redo it.  It seems so far that the second method is working out better.  It is difficult for me too though, because when I sew, I am more loose and see what happens kind of mentality, but they need a bit more structure than that right now.

Day Two

Here is our project from day two of sewing classes.  I'll try to take a picture from now on of what we're making each day.  This project was fun, but it was a bit time consuming since we had to do a lot of the stitches by hand instead of on the sewing machine.  Oh well, they're excited about projects to come and I am too!  And thankfully the completely Arabic classes haven't proven to be "too" challenging...yet.