A New Adventure (preparations)

I may have a habit of trying to pack too many things into the week or two before I leave on a lengthy trip. This time, we were headed to Abu Dhabi for a few months.

I was determined to be more prepared for Abu Dhabi than I had been for our month in Dubai. To start, I wanted a new wardrobe specifically for the climate and modesty. I had not been happy with my last minute selections for Dubai and I now had a better idea of what I might want. The month before our trip was filled with mail order delivery and corresponding returns. It turns out that finding climate and culture appropriate clothing that I also don't hate is quite a challenge. Between mail order and a couple trips to the mall, I had collected five shirts, two pairs of pants, and one dress. This may not sound like much, but this was incredible preparation compared to our earlier trip.

Of course, my packing preparations would not be complete without a sewing project to finish before the trip. Before Christmas, I had bought a pattern from Sew Sweetness to make a craft organizer. At that time, I thought I would make them for my brother's two older girls and Court's older girl. All three girls are of the age that paper and markers provide hours of entertainment - and everyone loves something colorful to organize such things in. But the Christmas holidays proved to be a bad time for my sewing projects. I didn't have time to go downtown for supplies and the zippers I ordered on Amazon did not arrive in time.

But now, I will return from Abu Dhabi to take a road trip with Court and her two girls. Thinking about this trip, I thought it would be great to have these craft binders for the girls, both in the car and in the hotel. This deadline provided the motivation to undertake the project.

Now, there was a second project I'd had in mind since Court told me she was expecting a second child - a quiet book. I have a Pinterest board full of ideas. Mind you, said second child is now two years old. I decided that putting such a book into the binder pattern I'd bought would be a good idea.

I decided to combine these two projects to create (1) a quiet book for my brother's youngest daughter, who is not yet a year old, (2) four craft binders, for my brother's older girls and Court's girls, and (3) an extra set of the quiet book pages for Court's two-year old. As the project evolved, I decided to put two of the quiet book activity pages into the "older" girls craft binders - a hair braiding page and a weaving page.

I ended up drafting the patterns I actually used for the binders. For the larger binders, I wanted to include a clipboard in the back to make it easier to use in the car. I bought cheap clipboards at Target and drafted my pattern around them. For the quiet book, I was using my available fabric and a smaller zipper, so I drafted the pattern around what I had handy. But for installing that zipper, Sew Sweetness provided great instructions with pictures!

Craig put together a fun video showing the binders I made for the "older" girls. Here is a link to it on Facebook, I'll try to add the actual video later.

Here's a video of the quiet book for the youngest:

Here are the extra pages I made for the two-year old, for the road trip:

 

On top of these exciting projects, I had the unhappy task of helping my nineteen-year-old niece pack for her return to Kansas. She lived with us for nine months and it was hard to see her go.

Sewing Adventures

Despite our trip to Dubai, I'm still taking one of my fashion classes. We had started a children's wear project before I left. I've been working on it here in Dubai. The electronic portion isn't finished yet (it's due Wednesday), but I've finished all the sewing.

I made a fit sample weeks ago and mailed it to my sister-in-law, Amity. She and my brother tried the fit sample (a simplified version of the dress made out of muslin) on their girls and sent me pictures. They also took a few measurements so that I could decide on design details.

Before we left, I was able to sew the dress for their eldest (because she was closest in size to the fit sample). I was in such a hurry to ship the dress before our flight that I forgot to take a picture of it. Amity was kind enough to send me this picture of the first dress:

I had also made a second fit sample before leaving. I draped this on a children's dress form at school and cut the cape the way I wanted it. It's not perfect, because the children's dress form at school is for a larger boys size. But you can get the idea:

In the midst of dress fittings, my brother decided to look at the power supply in Dubai. He recommended that I not attempt to take my sewing machine, which had been my plan. Something about the motor - a simple converter wouldn't solve the problem. Instead, I got a machine here. Of course, given the power situation, I'll have to leave the machine here.

First, I worked on the coat that goes with the dress. It came out pretty well, if I do say so myself. It's fully lined, which was a bit of a puzzle. I'm not sure how lining is installed in an industrial setting, but I'm pretty sure it isn't the way I did it. I'm very happy with the end result, though:

Lacking a dress form or a small child, I put the coat on a pillow to see how it looks. My pillow is a little too chubby for the coat:

When I asked Amity what her daughter thought of the dress, I was informed that the eldest wasn't a fan of the "wings" (the collar). But when discussion began about the dress, the younger girl stripped off her clothes and wiggled into the too-big dress. So today, I decided I would finish her dress as well.

Here it is, only partially hemmed:

I hemmed the bottom with a machine stitch to start. The dress could be let out to this length and no one would probably notice. But here it is hemmed by hand to the intended length:

That's an 1.5 inch hem, but it's hard to tell. Both dresses have large hidden pockets in the side seams. I was very happy to hear that both girls loved the pockets. They are far too young to be required to choose between wearing dresses and having the convenience of pockets.

Finally, a picture of the dress and coat that I've made in Dubai. The dress is approximately a size 2T and the coat is approximately a 4T.