Craftiness

Lately I have been adventuring into the world of being a little more crafty.  Sewing was a major step in that direction and I have worked on a few more sewing items including a drawstring bag, little pouches, and another quilt.

Drawstring bag that I can use as a shoe bag or lingerie bag for traveling

Current quilt project not yet finished. 

I also got some inspiration from pinterest to make my own wreath.  The original picture was for Halloween but I decided I would prefer a Cowboy wreath for football season. Go Cowboys!

Another big project I have had recently was selling personalized cups with Lindsey.  This was totally Lindsey's idea and I just went with it. We had some plastic tumblers sent over in someones shipment and then used our Cricuts to personalize the cups.  We sold them to ladies on Murjan and at the annual Murjan Bazaar.  We had a whole business set up with order forms, creating process, etc.  The day of the bazaar was busy and hectic (especially when you are doing a major part in putting on the entire bazaar) but it was a fun day.  We had several great friends volunteer to help us out with taking orders while we worked on creating the products.  Thanks Laura, Heather, Leti, and Amber! In the end we have sold almost all of our cups and had a blast working together.

Completed Cup orders

Product waiting to be personalized

Personalizing station

Our booth at the Bazaar

Cup Ladies :)

Order Up! 

Our wonderful friends: Laura (with Savannah) and Heather

I decided to have fun making an OSU cup for myself. 

Current sewing adventures

It had been a while since I posted anything about sewing but I have still been sewing whenever I get a chance.  So here's a recap of my sewing adventures since my first quilt:


Sadly this is the best picture I have of the quilt I made for baby Savannah.  In this picture it isn't finished yet so when Laura gets back I will have to get a better picture.  But, it is a really cute quilt.  

I also made another quilt for Gavin's 3rd birthday.  I worked on it sporadically for a long time but finished it up the day of his birthday.  I knew Gavin wouldn't care that much about it but I also knew Lindsey would be thrilled. The fabric for the cars is the exact same fabric of the curtains in Gavin's room.  It's from IKEA.  

I've also done a few random projects just testing out my skills. I made pillows and a book bag plus some other random things that I'm not going to take a picture of :)

After my projects and knowing that I really do enjoy sewing I decided to approach the topic of getting a new sewing machine with Micah.  My wonderful husband bought me a super cool new sewing machine.  Look at all my new stitch options!  It even has an automatic thread cutter which is amazing. 

Hopefully I will have more fun new projects in the future!

It's Official....

I'm 70 years old.  That's right.  If you were to listen of a description of my current life you would probably think I was a 70 year old woman.  I go to "coffee mornings", play cards, cook, walk my dog, and now I can add quilting to the list.  Yep, quilting.  In general, I have no desire to be a quilter.  However I do have the desire to learn how to use my sewing machine and just generally know how to sew.  There is a Saudi lady, Nora, that lives here in Jubail and is an excellent quilter.  She occasionally teaches beginner quilting classes and some of the other ladies here were nice enough to invite me along for the class.  I was the only one in the class who was a true beginner.  I couldn't even get my machine out of the case the first day.  The class was 2 days a week for 3 weeks.  We would work from 9:00am- 1:00pm.   In the class we learned how to pick fabric, cut fabric accurately (hopefully), and sew things together.
I was lucky and had a fun group of ladies to take the class with.  There were 7 ladies in the class, 5 of whom are Chevron wives like me.  Of course I was the youngest in the class.  I am the youngest with most things that I do during the day.  All of these ladies are so much fun to be around and the helped make my frustrations with sewing more enjoyable.  Here are some pictures of our class.

Judy and Lori

Cindy and Lonna

Me pretending to sew 

Lonna

 One evening I received a "Flat Stanley" from a relative in the States.  I decided he needed to go to quilting class with me and get a picture with a real Saudi lady.  Nora was so nice to agree to put her full covering on and take a picture with "Flat Stanley".

3.5 weeks later and many hours of cutting and sewing I had my first quilt (almost) finished.  I really liked the end result.  Since we had worked so hard in class Nora decided our last class would just be a party time.  Cindy hired Lindsey to bake us a really cute cake and other ladies brought some snacks.  We were also able to show off our finished projects. 

Lindsey's cake

My 1st quilt

Our class: Lori, Nora, Christianne (?), Lonna, Cindy, Else (?), Me, Judy

Happy Quilting!