My Birthday Giveaway! and IBU Charity Bazaar Shoutout

Salam Maal Hijrah! It's a new year according to the Hijrah Calendar which fell yesterday, Thursday, 15 November 2012; which was also my birthday. Yeay! Happy birthday to me! It's my 39th birthday. What a big number. It was a public holiday yesterday, in honour of my birthday, heheheh... A quiet affair at home. We had the Big Breakfast at Equine Park's McDonald's and later to Maycraft in Taipan, USJ to get some crochet yarn. You see, I ordered the Sharp Crochet Hook from Ebay and it came in the mail on Wednesday. I wanted to make some crocheted edging baby receiving blankets with some flannel that I ordered from Fabric.com.

So, that was pretty much my activity on my birthday. It was a wet Thursday. It rained practically throughout the day. Or was it? I was pre-occupied with the blankets.  So here they are, I've made 3 but ran out of yarn for the first one, thus it's not in the picture. These blankets will debut at IBU Bazaar this Sunday, 18 November 2012 at Publika. The introduction price is RM60.00 These are fully imported, high quality cotton flannel and the edging are made with high quality 100% cotton crochet thread. I made this simple shell edging with the variegated crochet thread and loving the effect. 

Since it's pretty much what I did on my birthday, I'm going to give ONE crocheted edging receiving blanket as my birthday giveaway. Here's what you have to do to qualify for the giveaway:

1. LIKE my fan page: www.facebook.com/madebyrozirahman  (if you haven't already)
2. SHARE this blog post on your Facebook wall
3. and leave a COMMENT at the bottom of this blog post

You can do #1 or #2 or do both but you must do #3 to stand a chance to win an exclusive handmade Crocheted Edging Receiving Blanket. (edit: The comments will be my way of tracking you) You can also state your preference whether you wish for a 'GIRL' or a 'BOY' blanket. 

This giveaway is open now and closes at 12.00 midnight, 30 November 2012. 

Moving on to the next agenda, my next Bazaar appearance will be on Sunday, 18 November 2012 at Publika. It's IBU Charity Bazaar. Here are some line up of the things that I'll be bringing to the bazaar apart from the receiving blankets:

No Sew Tutu

Blanket+Pillow combination=Blankow

Travel Changing Mats

So come and say "HELLO" to me and perhaps bring home a handmade Made by Rozi Rahman :)

UPDATED on 3 Dec 2012: The giveaway is closed. The winner will be announced in the next post

Bazaar #10: Little Red Market

It seems like a whole life time ago since I last opened a booth at a bazaar. That's me exaggerating. My last bazaar was before fasting month in July. I took a break throughout fasting month as my mother in-law was staying with us while the maid went back for a month break. Having a guest around didn't quite allow me to sew to my heart's content and my sewing room was reduced to a store room where the kids' toys and what have you were chucked there to make room for my MIL. She took the kids' room so the kids bunked with us. 

Alhamdulillah, the maid came back as promised to resume her tour of duty on Merdeka day. That day brings a special meaning of 'Merdeka' to me. Don't get me wrong. It wasn't hard to take care of my MIL. But it was tough emotionally for all of us especially when her memory is failing her. I'm just glad to put that episode behind me. 

I was quiet the whole of August too where I couldn't face clearing the tsunami-hit sewing room. I resorted to knitting, rag-rugging with the jumbo hooks and other stuff that doesn't require me to go and clear the room. I even lugged out the sewing machine and parked it on my dining table to sew baju raya for my kids and myself and even made a bigger mess.

I am so good at side-tracking aren't I? This is supposed to be about the upcoming Little Red Market.

I finally bucked up and cleared my room. Let me show you the before picture:

You can't even see the surface of my working table nor the surface of the floor! This is no exaggeration.

After a whole morning at it, things looked up and the room looks more workable:

I had to use the safety gate to keep Arwen out of the room or I'll never get anything done. The writing on the whiteboard were the list of things to make for Little Red Market last May!!!! 

This is going to be my 3rd appearance at Little Red Market. My association with Little Red Market started in February this year where I joined them for the first time for their 2nd LRM in a residence in Jalan Beka, Bukit Damansara. I went there without any expectation as I was curious on how are they going to pull crowd in to a private residence. But the reception completely blew my mind. I was busy from the word 'GO'. 

In May, they moved to White Box, Publika and I followed them. Bigger venue, more vendors, bigger crowd. Loving it more.

This time around, I need to put on my thinking cap and start making new things for the bazaar. I came out with my chalk mats and banners which was a runaway success, baby bibs and binkie clips sold well too. 

So for the 4th Little Red Market and the last for the year (according to the banner), I made new items: Wet bags with PUL lining, Tunisian Crochet Ipad cosy, and my very own Blankow, a Blanket and pillow combination.

There's more... want to see what else I have? Follow me on my fanpage on Facebook and make a date with me at the Little Red Market on Sunday, 14 October 2012 at WhiteBox, Publika.

Baby Quilt in progress and a few quickie projects

Ever since I got my Lumix GF1 (and later GF2), I vow that I would not post any camera phone pictures in my blog but I’m going to make an exception today because the whole lot of my photos today came from my iphone. Call it, “In honour of Steve Jobs (1955-2011)”. It just crossed my mind that he died at the same age as my dad, at 56. Great men... Well, Rest In Peace Steve Jobs.

On with my story. It’s been a while since I last made a baby quilt. Too long. I promised my cousin that I made her one when she gets a baby. The baby is now 6 months old. I need to get cracking on that quilt. So, last Wednesday, I got to make some sketches, chosed some fabric and piece together some blocks to make this in one morning! How cool is that? The piecing together of the blocks and sash is the easy part. The tough part of quilting the quilt is yet to come.

Then, I got sidetracked when the admin of a craft group that I joined suggested a toy/doll sewalong. I knew there would be hundreds of dolls/toys tutorial on the internet and I googled “Angry birds tutorial”, thinking that it’s a chance in a million that someone would share a tutorial on those cute birds. I was proven wrong when I came across Obsessively Stitching blog. She has the whole Angry birds jingbang plushies made. Here’s the link to her: Obsessively Stitching: Angry Birds Plush!

Angry Birds Plush from Obsessively Stitching

I wanted to make one really bad and needed to get some fleece for the birds. Plus, I need to get the backing for my baby quilt anyway so I drove over to Kamdar IOI Mall to get some fleece. I only bought a red fleece and substituted the other colours with flannel.

Here’s my shopping assistant window shopping at Toys ‘r’ Us (which is right next to Kamdar) after being good while mama gets her stuff. 

She’s so into fashion!

A quick photo shoot

Little Diva

It was raining when we wanted to get back to the car. So I pulled out the red fleece and cover Arwen with it. She liked it so much that I let her use it as a blanket to keep from the air cond in the car. 

Arwen dozed off under the blanket

We got back in time to fetch Danial from school. Danial saw an opportunity to use his raincoat so I let him. The rain was about to stop and it wasn’t raining so hard as it had earlier. I thought, why not? I used to love playing in the rain as a kid.

I didn’t waste time and got to making my own Angry bird plush the next day. The tutorial is very easy to follow and here’s the result: I think I should have put some fiber fill into the top feather as well. 

Arwen fell in love with it the moment she woke up.

Since she loved the fleece so much, I decided to make her a blanket. I saw a patchwork border wool blanket in Weekend Sewing by Heather Ross. It’s a good way to use up my scrap fabric. While attaching the border to the fleece material, I recalled the idea of a quillow. I made a quick search and found this on youtube: 

Since it’s not exactly a quillow, I’m dubbing it as a BLANKOW which is a combination of a blanket and a pillow. Here’s some photos of my BLANKOW:

A for Arwen Blankow in pillow form

Blankow in blanket form

The layout of the BLANKOW

Reverse side of the BLANKOW, you can see the pocket stitching. The opening is towards the centre of the BLANKOW

The Blankow all folded up and ready to go. I think it’s a neat gift for a baby shower and practical too. You can keep it in the car or bring it in a stroller with the baby. Now, I have to make one for Danial too, otherwise he’ll sulk.