Halloween 10/31/2014

Easy Bag

I haven't sewn anything in quite awhile. I decided to make something very quick and easy. I had a panel fabric with birds on it that I turned into a bag using these directions: Twenty-Minute-Bag. I modified the directions slightly. The dimensions of my bag are different because I cut the panel so that each of the four main birds would be featured. The only other thing I did differently is I didn't cut the corners at angle; instead, I sewed across the corners to provide bag depth. See instructions for making bags out of t-shirts in my blog for more information on that. And, I didn't want inside-out fabric inside the bag, so I used two of the birds as lining inside of the bag. Also, I was running low on thread and getting lazy, so I didn't zig-zag stitch around the bag at the end - only straight-stitch. It could probably use a snap in the middle but I've never done that and don't have the equipment and I'm too lazy to do a button. Velcro or zipper could probably be done, too. But it is fine as is, too. I'm really slow and not particularly good at sewing, so from cutting to sewing this took longer than 20-minutes but the actual sewing was probably right on about 20 minutes with me sewing on the slowest setting.

"I Spy" or "Find It" Jar

When I was Christmas shopping, I saw this game at Target called "Find it." It looked pretty neat, but definitely expensive at nearly $20. The idea is to find the objects hidden in the container (without opening it, of course). So, I decided to make my own.

I used bird seed and mason jars and various little things inside the jars. When I was looking for things to put in the jars, I found some wood beads that had letters on them and put the whole alphabet in each jar so the jars could also be used for spelling practice and word-finding.

I've gotten good feedback on the few I made so far - kids and adults both enjoy them. I think I may leave one in my classroom as well.

Make a t-shirt bag - world's easiest sewing project

I think I found the world's easiest sewing project online that actually makes something practical. And it recycles - no need to buy fabric. It should take only a few minutes - say 15 minutes or less. A child as young as kindergarten age can do this with supervision and will have fun and avoid frustration that often comes with trying to learn to sew. It requires only one straight stitch and a few cuts, and two more straight stitches are optional. Adult beginning sewers will also enjoy being able to make something with ease. Some youth groups make these and sell them for charity projects.

Materials needed: a t-shirt, scissors or rotary cutter, thread & needle or sewing machine ready to sew a straight stitch.

Step 1. Find an old t-shirt and turn it inside out. It must be jersey material (standard t-shirt material).

Step 2. Set up your sewing machine (or you can hand-stitch if you prefer.)

Step 3. Turn the shirt inside out.

Step 4. Sew the bottom of the shirt closed right above the existing hem using a standard straight stitch or any other stitch you prefer. If you want to be careful, you can pin the two sides together first. If you use a straight stitch, go back and forth at the very beginning of your line and at the end of you line to help lock the stitch in place. Jersey stretches so you may accidentally pull your fabric and end up with a stitch that is not completely straight - sewing slower can help that, but for this project it really doesn't matter - your bag will still look great even with a wandering stitch like mine shown below. You can repeat/go-over this stitch to make it stronger if you like.



Step 5. This step is optional. Reach inside the t-shirt and open it a little, then pull the two sides apart down near the bottom of your inside-out bag, so that you can create a bit of an opening. Lay the fabric that you just sewed together so that you have a triangle on the end as the picture below shows. Sew straight across a few inches in (as in the picture) and this creates some depth to the bag so that it sort of has a bottom instead of just closing to a line. This is called a gusset, I think. The further you sew this in from the end, the greater depth you give the bag, but that triangle above where you sew will be inside your finished bag just kind of hanging out in there, and you probably don't want it to be really really big.

Repeat this stitch making the triangle corner on the other side of the bag bottom about the same distance in. You can measure if you want to, but it really isn't necessary - eyeballing it will work just fine. If the two stitches are very different distances in from the end or are very crooked, it could be a little noticeable in the final product, but your bag will still function just fine.



Step 6. Using scissors or a rotary cutter, cut off the sleeves by following along inside the seam that attaches the sleeve to the shirt, so that the seam is no longer on the shirt body. Cut off the collar the same way. After cutting off the collar, cut the neck a little wider or deeper if you want to, but be careful not to cut into any cool design/pattern that might be on the shirt front, unless you don't care.




Step 7. Turn it right-side out. You now have a flexible and surprisingly sturdy tote bag that can be used for grocery shopping or anything else. An adult t-shirt makes a huge bag. The one pictured was an adult large, I think. Child shirts will make smaller bags.

Sewing Today

First time I've sewed in like a year - made two oversize pillowcases and a bag today.

Sunbonnet

So today I decided I wanted a sunbonnet like in the artist pictures for Little House on the Prairie. It would come in handy for mowing the lawn, yard work, or Western dress up day at school, etc.

I found some instructions at Mother Earth and sort of followed them. I was too lazy to make a pattern and just cut the fabric directly. I kept sewing the seams on the wrong side but I like the end result, it is good enough for me - what do you think? Instead of three layers of muslin in the brim, I used one layer of batting that I had on hand. And it took me more like 3 or 4 hours than the 2 suggested by the directions - it always takes me longer than instructions say it will because I mess up and or it takes longer to cut, etc.

Links to Useful Things

I thought I'd share a few links that have caught my interest.

1. Paperbackswap.com. If you have some books you'd like to weed out, you can post them here and people who want them will ask you to mail them. For every book you mail you earn a credit to request a book from someone else (plus you receive two start-up credits when you register (no cost involved anywhere except mailing a book someone else requests)). They have lots of members and hence lots of books - not always every one I'm looking for, but often something similar is available.

2. Shutterfly.com Shutterfly has a nice feature where you can make your own calendars using your own photos that you upload. You can customize dates and pictures. I made family calendars as Christmas gifts - each month features pictures of whoever has their birthday that month, and their birthday is featured on the calendar like any other holiday. I also made a Muslim calendar with wallpaper with Qur'anic ayahs captioned with quotes of Ahlulbayt (as) with all the Shia Islamic dates for the year put in (such as Ashura, Eid, birth/death dates, etc.)

3. Bloglines If you enjoy reading a particular blog, you can put its URL in here and come here to find which of the blogs you follow has been updated so that you never miss a post. Not just blogs are in rss-feeds anymore - many news services, cartoons, etc., have rss feeds and any of them can be followed here.

4. Vegetarian Menu Planner There are many menu planner sites out there. I don't eat fully vegetarian but for practical reasons, such as halal meat is only available in Denver, I eat that way most of the time. This lady posted two months of dinner menu plans with 5 meals each week including the grocery list. Most of the meals are vegan and easy to adapt. Something like this may be a good way to try to start eating healthier, learn to cook, and save on groceries.

5. Foxway Budget Tracker Some people are budget people and some aren't, but we really all should be. No need to spend lots of money on budget software when this Excel spreadsheet does the job beautifully.

I'm no expert, but here are the general steps to follow for budget tracking:

Step 1: Get an updated statement of all your accounts from your bank, or view them via online banking. You can obtain statements by going to a branch of your bank and asking for them. Most will give up to three months of statements for free as long as you aren’t asking for them constantly. Online banking is the better option because you can view all account transactions instantly. One aspect of online banking that is extremely useful is bill pay. You can enter the account and address information of all your recurring bills such as mortgage, utilities, and loans and set up recurring payments. This can help avoid late payments and saves money in postage. Many banks offer online banking and bill pay for free. If yours doesn’t, you probably should consider changing banks. Online banking is as secure as through the mail – the chances of identity theft through online banking are similar to those created by sending your bills through the post office. However, be sure to look for the secure lock symbol in your Internet browser every time you do online banking or purchase something online.

Step 2: Determine your monthly income from all sources – salary, hourly wages, money from family, stipends, etc. If your income is not the same every month, take an average of your monthly incomes over several representative months as your typical income for budget purposes.

Step 3: Go through every penny spent in your account statements and put it into categories. If it is a recurring bill, keep it as its own category. Example categories include mortgage, credit card, gas and oil for car, insurance (life, home and auto), Netflix, allowance/spending money, books, Internet service, groceries, electricity, and so on. Be careful to include bills that do not come every month but instead come quarterly, bi-annually or annually, such as certain insurance payments, trash service, property taxes, car registration, and professional society fees or magazine subscriptions. Also, don’t forget to include savings. You may want to break down your savings into categories with goals. It is a good idea to build savings for home maintenance and car maintenance as well as for emergencies and travel. If you do not have a separate bank account for savings, it is a good idea to open one. Studies show that people with who have a separate account for savings are more successful at saving. If you don’t have a savings account, you can open one online in just minutes in many areas. For example, U.S. citizens or permanent residents can open an ING Direct Orange Savings account in about 5 minutes. It is free, has a great rate, is well-rated, has no minimum balance, and can directly transfer money from any U.S. checking account you own on a recurring or one-time basis as you desire.

Step 4: Find the total you spent in every category for each month in your account statements. Then, if you created any new categories such as savings, allot an initial goal amount for each. For any bills that recur less often than monthly, you should calculate or estimate how much you will owe in a year to that biller and divide by 12 and use that amount. For example, you may find that you spent an average of $288 dollars each month on food, exactly $1101.87 each month for your rent, that you want to save $50 each month toward a summer road trip, and that your trash bill is $60.00 every three months so you need to budget $20 each month for it.

Step 5: Add up every category total from step 4 and compare this sum to your monthly income you found in step 2. If your sum is greater than your income, you must adjust whichever categories are flexible until the two amounts are equal. If your spending is way out of line or you experience a sudden decrease in income, you may even need to eliminate some categories altogether to make the two numbers balance. Most people find they can eliminate a cell phone or land line, cable or satellite TV, and some of their food budget. It is not recommended to completely eliminate savings or allowance/spending money from your budget, although these may need to be decreased if you are in dire straits.

Step 6: Enter your budget into the spreadsheet. You can customize the categories to suit your needs. Then, enter what you actually spend for a given month in the same spreadsheet. Use online banking to help with this if you can, or every time you make a purchase or send a bill enter it into the spreadsheet that day in its appropriate category. If you prefer, do this once a week, but you have to make sure not to miss anything you spent. Your budget won’t help you much if it is inaccurate. This file will automatically compute for you where you have overspent, where you have extra, and your running totals and deficits for each month and the year-to-date. Don’t forget to save your budget file every time you make changes to it and to periodically back it up somewhere such as a flash drive.

Step 7: Periodically analyze your spending compared to what you budgeted. If there are categories that you are consistently overspending in, you may need to increase how much you budget for it by taking aware from another item, or you may need to be more strict with yourself in that spending category. Similarly, if there are line items that you frequently underspend, you may be able to decrease how much you have budgeted for them and put the extra somewhere else. Don’t forget that some items are not paid monthly and that, for example, the trash bill will show as underspent for a few months until the bill actually comes due. Likewise, some bills vary greatly due to season, like a gas heating bill. You may budget an average monthly payment, but during winter in any given month you will likely overspend it and in summer months you will spend considerably less than budgeted, but over the course of the year the budget should balance out. Finally, analyze your savings against your goals – do you need a newer car more than a new fence? Maybe you should put more into your car savings category and less into the home maintenance savings category.

On another note, if anyone has ideas/suggestions about very easy vegetable gardening - probably container gardening - let me know. I plan to do tomatoes again this year, and am thinking of trying zucchini.

Projects

One day before Thanksgiving Break, one of my more social classes was on-task quite a bit more than usual. One student said I should take a picture, but laughed heartily when I actually did.



I'm still taking sewing classes. Actually, my October class was canceled so I was taking it in November. I am working on a dress but I'm not more than half-way done yet. But one night last month I made these fleece pillowcases for my nieces and nephew for Christmas. I found the fleece cheap. Not my best sewing work, I just wanted to get them done.



For the adults, I made family-photo calendars for Christmas, using Shutterfly.com. I also made one with all the Shia calendar events and hijri dates - if anyone wants to order one I can do some customizing for you so let me know. Not cheap for ordering one, but when you order several the prices are more reasonable.



And tonight was my first quilting class. Long day from being at work at 7am and getting home from quilting at 9:30pm but so far it is going well and I like it. It is a bit mathematical / geometric and the sewing and directions so far are simpler than trying to do some of the crazy things that go on in garment-making.

Sewing 301

Sewing 201 - Pajama Pants

None of us finished in the 3 hour class so I had to come home and finish the hems on the legs and fix the elastic because it had flipped when I put it in the first time.

Kind of like nurse pants or salwar kameez pants. Good enough for around the house or under my abaya I guess. The teacher convinced me to sign up for the next class - I have to go sign up for it tomorrow insha'allah.

Crochet 101

So this stuff is the result of a few hours with a lady who knows crochet. I found at least the basics of crochet are very easy and a bit fun but your hands can get tired, and to make a finished product can take a lot of time. None of these really are anything - maybe a green bookmark - and one is a little bag but it ended up a little lopsided because the stitches on one side were tighter than the other. The long thing strand if I continue it could be the beginning of a blanket, but it would take hours and hours and hours to finish, so we'll see. Good thing is that it is doesn't require full concentration because it is repetitive, unless you are trying to follow a pattern that changes frequently so that you have to keep counting stitches. I'm not up to that too much yet. Yarn is pretty expensive - to finish that blanket to a size I'd like would probably take 6 skeins with each skein being around $5. So it isn't cheaper than just buying a blanket in a store really. So you really have to want to make something or have something in mind that you can't find in a store.

Sewing - 1st Product

I decided to go to JoAnn's today for a learn-how-to-use-a-sewing-machine class. At the end of the three hours, I got to bring home this pillow case I made:



I was the last one done, had to rip some seams, but all in all I'm pleased to have a usable result. I paid $25 for the class and $1.97 for the fabric. I signed up for the next class a week from tonight to make a pair of PJ pants. I hope I'm ready!

Recipe Project

I am working on compiling some of the favorite family recipes into a book. My mom's recipes are mostly written on 30-40 year old sheets of paper or torn from newspapers from the '60s and '70s and a modern upgrade is definitely in order. I downloaded a Word recipe card template that I am using. My plan is to get it all printed when done on nice paper at Kinko's or some place like that and then put each page in a page protector and in a 3-ring binder and give copies to members of the family, along with a CD of the file so they can edit and make changes and add pages over time.




I thought perhaps some of you in blogland might have recipes that might be included in the book.

The basic criteria are as follows:

1. The simpler the better - fast, few ingredients, nothing hard to find, etc.

2. Generally avoiding things that include pork, alcohol, etc.

3. "American" fare - but basic oriental, mexican, Italian common on American tables are fine

4. Dinner main courses or holiday fare or desserts are the primary recipe types