Passport cover craft and lessons learned :-)

I am being brave, showing a close-up with alllll my imperfections. :-) That's just how I roll blog.

A'salaamu alaikum ya'll. I think I mentioned I've been feeling inspired lately to be crafty. Alhamdulillah, after spending a wee bit o' money on supplies, I finally bit the bullet and made something! I've also mentioned my "I have too much to do to ever get finished" guilt complex. I rarely do things just for me because I feel I should be doing things that NEED to be done. Alhamdulillah today I ignored those niggly feqdfjk;7....

Wonder what THAT was about? Well Zainab apparently thought it was a great idea to spray water from the kitchen and it hit my laptop! We had a minor emergency while she brought some paper towels to dry it. I hit a few stray keys. :-D Back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Jo's awesome, oh-so-professional quality passport cover. Nice!

Soooo alhamdulillah I ignored those niggly feelings of guilt today and spent a few hours happily crafting. I followed a tutorial on Chubby Hobby, another (totally random) Japanese woman who is a craftress supreme! Her tutorial was a bit of a challenge for me until I started putting the pieces together. Then I could see exactly how it was going to work out. :-)

However, me being me and all, it didn't turn out quite as perfect as hers. :-) For one, I forgot to buy a button. So I improvised and made a yo-yo (the gathered circles of fabric? super cute!) attached it to use as the button. Worked out great and I think it was pretty cute too.

Oh my look at those bad seams!!! This is what I'll be discussing next. :-D

Now my big mess up came when I chose my interfacing. You know, the stuff that can make it more stiff or firm? Yeah that stuff. First, I was supposed to get fusible, iron-on interfacing. I didn't. Alhamdulillah I had some stitch-witchery so I ironed that on and it held it in place very well.

Second, I got really stiff interfacing (she didn't specify and I didn't know). Turns out with this heavier type you can't sew your items inside out and then turn it so you have great hidden seams. I ended up only being able to sew 2 edges that way then trying to tuck, tuck, tuck fabric in and top seam it. Uh-huh. A bit stressful but I soldiered on!

Two pockets at top for passports, and two pockets at bottom for other I.D. or travel papers. Nifty!

I really like this pattern/fabric combo (I was pretty intimidated by trying to pick out co-ordinating but not matching fabrics) but I did buy some much nicer stuff (on clearance from A.C. Moore, woo-hoo) that I'll use my next go-round insha'Allah.

Oh also the wonky seams are where the heavy interfacing (triple ply by now!) was too thick and I had to lift the presser foot up on my sewing machine. Therefore it got a picky jiggy. :-)

All in all, I am ok with it. Now I know exactly how to do it next time and what I need to change to make it nicer. I think I will give this one to the girls, Hafsa and Zainab, for their passports. Mean? I don't think so; they like it anyway. :-) Just glad I didn't put my name on it anywhere, as in "made by..." :-))

Ma salaama ya'll!

Where the "magic" happens. Yeah, please notice the "  ".   :-D