My Adventures in Sewing | Personal

Let me just preface this post with I stink at posting every day. :( If anyone has any ideas on how I should change that, let me know.

So I have a quirky husband, if you didn't know, and he wanted to find a little coin purse/wallet that he could carry around and put his change in. He didn't like the loose change in his wallet or in his pocket, so he wanted to put it somewhere.

We have spent countless hours trying to find one at stores. We have gone everywhere - including thrift stores - and have found nothing he likes. Well, and the largest reason is that normally MEN do not want a coin purse!! :) So all the coin purses are for women and they are really cute, not meant for guys.

So after much begging on my part, he decided to let me make him a coin purse! This was my first venture into sewing something other than buttons back on shirts. I don't have a sewing machine, so I did this all by hand. :) 

So we went to Joann's, and I picked up some thread, a zipper, and some scrap fabric. I already had needles and pins. And this is what came of it:

He picked out the color of fabric and zipper color and I really do think it turned out quite well. It took me, doing it by hand about 4 hours to do. I've never done anything like this before - I think the most I have ever stitched was on a quilt that had been put together by me and all I was doing was stitching the pieces together. And, I dabbled a little in cross stitching, but I've never made anything like this before.

He seems to like it, but he's pretty picky. He told me that it would grow on him. :) 

Regardless, I am quite happy the way it turned out, especially that it's my first one! :) It was a lot of fun making!

Happy Saturday - hope you have a great day of relaxation!

DIY Projects | Personal

Ever since we've moved - and I'm unsure why this is - but I've become a fanatic about "Do it Yourself" projects. As I mentioned in a previous post about our cute, red produce cart, that is one of the many things I've either helped make or made myself in the last 30 days of living in Tempe. 

Maybe it's because I'm not as busy?? That will all soon change, I'm sure, if that is the case!!!

Besides the cute, red produce cart that I'm absolutely stoked about, when we went on our trip overseas, we purchased a few souvenirs for ourselves. One of them that we accumulated was supposed to be a gift for someone else, but it broke in transit and I couldn't give it to them broken. So, I decided to put it back together again!

However, the snag in the fabric in this situation is that I didn't save the pieces that broke off!!! Whoops! I wasn't thinking when I threw that away apparently. :)

This is where I guess you have to be creative.

So we went to JoAnn's where I looked and looked, but couldn't find anything that remotely resembled any of the pieces on the clock, so we bought something random, hoping it would fit. 

After we got home, we realized how much it did not fit. Since, however, JoAnn's is somewhat far away, we decided, let's try it. So we did.

And this is what came of it:

What do you think? Can you tell which parts I changed to make it work?? If you can't then, YES! It worked. If not, oh well - I'm a rookie at this whole DIY thing. :) After all, I could have just thrown away the clock, but I didn't have the heart to. It's too beautiful to do such a thing AND it's all handmade. Now handmade by Pakistani's and me, but mostly by Pakistani's! :)

I'll have to mention later what I did change - first I want to hear your guesses!! :) Good luck! I might just think of something good for the winner to receive. 

Update on Saturday, July 31, 2010 at 8:51PM by Ashley

Well, I had a few guesses, and none of them were exactly right, so I will tell you the answer to this mirror.

I changed the following things:

-The yellow beads on the right side underneath the green beads were changed. Those broke off.

-The big red, green and yellow stone-looking beads were all new. To make it seem symmetrical, I stripped the other side (even though it was perfectly intact) painted it black with my acrylic paint and then glued them down on both sides. This is where I learned that it is imperative to use Krazy Glue with gloves and not bare hands. :) 

Just in case you were wondering, that was the answer! 

And just a sneak peak into tomorrow's post - I'm going to be posting a "how to" post. It gives you insight as to how I edit my pictures and that sort of thing! Stay tuned!