Handmade Crossbody Bag

Another product from my weekend craft activity.. I spent about 3 hours making this crossbody bag (sling bag) with my youngest sister. Actually, she didn't do anything much other than helping me cutting the fabrics and watching me sewing her bag... My intention was to teach her how to make this bag, so that she can spend her school holiday learning something new and able to make another bag for my other younger sister... But, in the end, I was the one who assembled and sewed everything. Hmm..., Aishah, looks like you have to wait a little longer for "THAT TIME" to come when my head instructs my hands "SIMULTANEOUSLY" to grab that scissors and sewing machine.. Hahaa...

That evening, she used it for the first time when we went out to pizza's restaurant.. 

DIY : Casual Bag

 Another series of making my DIY bags... My first bag project was made from a placemat. For this second project I used velvet fabric, not because of the texture that got me, it was the colour that attracted me. It was quite soft and it got a bit slippery when I sewed it. The tutorial was almost the same as my previous project, except that I added adhesive paper to harden and flatten the bottom part of the bag.. You can refer the tutorial here.

 The felt flower was from my previous DIY project.

Close up picture of the fabric..

The strap was made from a shirt belt. I bought this shirt last week. It came with a fabric belt and I didn't want to wear the belt. Now, it has a new place to hang on. Look at the bottom part of the bag.. It got flatten after I added the adhesive paper inside.

Can you see the leaning 2" x 2" wood against the wall? That would be our next project for breakfast counter bench. Hopefully, we will work it out very soon!!

DIY : Fabric Flower Headband

This fabric flower was made from remnants from my previous project (I made a tunic..That was unbelievable, I made my own shirt and dress!)... I'll post my finished tunic in next posting.. I made this together with my 6 year old niece. We made two of them, one for her and the other one for her cousin (my niece too).

Using the skinny elastic this headband can be worn as headband and also as hair tie.

Tasneem wearing it as headband...

and also as hair tie...

Doesn't it look cute on her?

DIY : Felt Headband

 I made a felt flower headband for my husband's niece. She wore this on her 1st birthday (that was yesterday).

Yummy2... strawberry...

Haha... she became so excited to grab the cake... so cute...

This picture was taken a day before her birthday wearing the felt flower headband...

I'll write the tutorial in another posting.. Nowadays, I got so busy finishing my labworks... Have a nice day!!

DIY : Upholstered Bench Part 2

These are some pictures of the finished upholstered bench. In part 1 post, I wrote about how we made this bench. As you can see there are nail holes and some gaps between the joints. But, it's okay. This was our first project. My husband intends to buy a jigsaw soon, so that we can cut perfect angle of the woods.

Can you see the gaps and nail holes?

Bye for now.. Have a nice day...

DIY : Felt Flower Headband Part 1

Few months back, I promised to my husband's niece to make a headband for her.. It took quite some time to get the courage to make it.. Finally, I did it during last weekend... Here are some photos of the finished product.. Tutorial will be posted soon... HAVE A NICE DAY... 

DIY : Placemat Shopping Bag Part 2 (TUTORIAL)

I just finished sewing my first placemat shopping bag... (gonna make more bags..). In my part 1 post, I thought I was gonna make the handle using the polka dot ribbon. But the ribbon width was a bit smaller, it didn't nicely fit with the large placemat. So, I made the handle using the bag strap... I found it at a local craft store, RM6 for 3 metres...

TADAA...here is the finished product.. I just love how it turned out so adorable with the fabric flower.

This is the handle strap..

First, on the right side of the placemat, measure 3 inch from the side and pin it. I was quite easy because the placemat had vertical stripes. 

(Suppose to do like this) At the end of the strap, tuck the end of the strap under the other end and fold the upper strap about and inch. I made a mistake here (below picture).. 

Make sure to make a loop at the end of the placemat and the length should be equal for both sides.

 Sew 1/4" seam along the strap on both side of the strap.

Once finished, fold the placemat in half with the wrong side facing out. 
Stitch on both sides for 1/2 inch seam. Do not stitch on the opening of the bag.

With the wrong side is still facing out, pin the bottom corner of the bag such below picture. Mark about 3 inch from the end of the corner and stitch the dotted line. Repeat this step with the other corner.

Turned the right side out and tadaa... You got it... Very simple and easy project...

Once again, my placemat handbag sitting on upholstered bench...

Have a nice day!! :)

DIY : Placemat Shopping Bag Part 1

I found this DIY idea on pinterest. It was made by Deborah from wonderwomancreations.blogspot.com (click here to directly go to her post). I felt in love with her polka dot ribbon.. The ribbon tie was really cute and adorable.. Most importantly, it was affordable especially to the DIY lovers and crafters. 

I was looking for placemat for quite some times. So, last weekend when I went to Tesco Extra I found this placemat for RM11.50 (about USD3.50). Another placemats were below RM10, but the clothes were not as good as this one.I think it was a great bargain considering the quality of the placemat and apparently, only one left. It was my lucky day, I guess!

To make the handle, I bought a spool of ribbon for RM5.90. 

Here suppose what it looks like when I finished it.. :)

For embellishment, I will make a fabric flower from remnants of my previous projects. 

Ok, will need to start sewing now.. I will update the final product once finished. 

Tata for now...

*UPDATE - You can refer the finished bag here.

DIY : Felt Baby Shoes

Here is my second felt project. Baby shoes...  First project was making a felt shopping bag. But, no pictures were taken. Huhu..

It was made for my husband's niece.. The hand-stitches were not so neat. I was in a hurry to finish it up because they were leaving back to Putrajaya.

Here is from another angle.

I wrongly sewed right to left side and vice versa. Huhu... Got to make one for me like marthastewart's (here and here for baby shoes's tutorial)

Have a nice day!!

DIY: Upholstered bench

We moved to our first house on 1st January 2012. It was new year's day... So, when other people went out to movies, picnics etc. we spent the whole day, shifting our things to our new home.. At the time we moved in, the house was still not in good condition. The wall was not yet painted, wiring was still going on, there was no kitchen etc. We ended up having dinner outside for about a month, until all the major renovations completed. 

Our first DIY project was to make an upholstered bench for living room. There was an empty space in our living room that I kept thinking what kind of furniture that fit in there. So, one day, during our journey to find a tv cabinet (it was a long and tiring journey), I saw this kind of simple bench that costs RM250 (about USD80), which I thought very expensive for that simple design. The bench looked almost like this.

While my husband looked around for a tv cabinet, I studied the bench design, tried to register into my brain, and thought I could use some spare woods from kitchen cabinet project.

We went back home.. I told my husband about it, he said, ok and then blah..blah about other things. Hurmm, as usual he didn’t really anticipate to what I was talking about. I started with designing the bench (huhu, like a real pro… ;-) ) … It was only a sketch. I showed it to my husband and asked him to help me cutting the wood. And then he was like, uh, ok… I waited for about a week for him to cut the wood. So, on Monday, I came back from the lab and got the courage to cut it on my own. I was able to cut 3 pieces of 1” thick x 2” width wood for 2’ long (uughh, that was hard). I showed to him when he came back from work later, he was like “Ok, I’ll help you tomorrow to cut the rest”. But, he didn’t. So, on Friday I urged him to help me (he was on leave that day) cut the wood and immediately assembled it. This was the look .. :-p it didn’t look nice, right?

During our "journey" searching for tv cabinet, my husband learnt about hi-gloss painting. Thanks to the chinese owner of a furniture store. He was really kind to give us a lesson about furniture painting and lamination. Suddenly, my husband became really enthusiatic to beautify my bench. He did some research and stumbled into some high gloss painting techniques on the websites. He didn’t wait any longer, and went to the hardware store the next day. He purchased two types of paint; hi gloss paint and undercoat paint, a wood filler and a plastic scraper (I guess it came with the filler).

Next weekend, early in the morning, he started polishing the bench with sandpaper. He used a sandpaper modified to fit the grinder and easily polished the surface. There were many nail holes on the surface, he filled it with wood filler, dried it up for half an hour and polished it again with hand-sanding. He repeated this for 2 times.

After that he painted the bench with undercoat and dried it under direct sun for 30 minutes and sanded it again. He repeated it two times (supposed need to repeat few more times, but he couldn't wait to see the finished result). 

Lastly, he painted with high gloss paint and this was what it looked like after drying.

This was our first DIY together (even though, he seemed not interested in the beginning, I appreciate him for helping me went through that tough job; sawing! ;-)). 

So, next step was upholstering that bench. I don't have the finished picture now (have to disciple myself to hold camera all the time, sigh!). Will upload it in next posting.

Have a nice day!!

*Sorry for the low quality pictures. I used my handphone camera to take the pictures. Need to snap using my DSLR.