Etsy Craft Party 2011 - Jajce, Bosnia and Herzegovina

We had a great time :) Enjoy the pictures - you can see more if you click here. Did you go to a Craft Party? How was it?

more of my sewing endevours...

This week I've been to a sewing course that was held in our church for a couple of hours each morning. While most people were interested in making clothes for themselves I decided to try making clothes for amigurumis!

'a' is my first attempt at making a summer tunic top type thing. It was a bit bulky round the top but not too bad as first try.

'b' is my second attempt and turned out a lot better.

'c' is one of my dolls wearing the top - it doesn't really go with her outfit but I had to try it on a doll to check it was the right size.

'd' shows my first attempt at making jeans - they're unfinished and a bit too small so I'll try again later.

All in all I think it's pretty good progress for 3 mornings work and has given me the basics I need to keep going. Eventually I'm sure I'll make something I'm really happy with.

And if you're interested in how my curtains turned out you can see one of them in my blog post finally - a space to be creative.

Making curtains is not for me!

Last night and today I've been making curtains for our new place. It has a weird curtain system with clips instead of curtain hooks or tabs so in theory it's all really simple and all you need to do is hem around big rectangles of fabric, clip them up and you've got your curtains. The thing is that straight lines are just so hard to do - especially when they have to be 2 metres long! I have to say that I didn't enjoy making them at all cos I knew that they were all wonky and there was nothing I could do to make it right! The fabric was so slippy and stretchy it was hard to keep the tension right and I had to use the lines on the living room floor as a guide to pin up the hems! Anyway they're finished now and tomorrow we will try hanging them up and see if they work...

Trying New Things

One of my best friends is having a baby very soon and because there isn't much choice of funky baby stuff available here in Bosnia Herzegovina we're making it all ourselves! She has decided that 'Owls' is the theme for the baby's room. This is my first attempt at making plush using a sewing machine and I think it came out ok. I'll keep going and make a few more and see which one turns out best!

Don't forget to enter the giveaway if you want the chance to win a super cute pumpkin!

How I made this bag and other things...

I haven't posted a blog for 10 days - I think that's the longest time since I started blogging. Why? I guess life has been busy! We're in the last 2 weeks of our summer holiday programme at Klub Novi Most and every day is busy working with young people, preparing activities etc. And as well as all that we've been to camp for 2 days, we've had a visitor from the UK for 2 weeks and we've been house hunting in Jajce.

The house hunting is now over as yesterday we found a really lovely place :) our visitor from the UK is gone and there's no more camp so maybe the pace of life will slow down a bit now.

This bag is something that I made as an example for a sewing night we had at Klub Novi Most on Friday. We had 7 girls come and each of them made a bag similar to this one. It's a very simple reversible bag:

• For the pattern I drew round a piece of A3 paper, folded the fabric in half and cut it about 1cm away from the lines so the fabric is as big as 2 sheets of A3 paper.
• Then I ironed the fold and using a sewing machine I sewed up the 2 sides along the lines I had drawn.
• I did this again with another fabric.
• Then put one inside the other and sewed the tops together. To do this you take the 2 bag parts you have made, turn one the right way out and leave the other inside out. Then put the inside out part inside the part that is the right way out. then fold in the tops of both parts, pin them together so they match and sew.
• For the strap I just cut a piece of fabric as long as I wanted it, folded it in half and sewed along the side. Then I turned it inside out and sewed it to the bag.