Birkat Chaverim Blog

I hadn’t run a doll clothing workshop ever, and its been a while since i’ve run craft classes for children. I came up with a list of what I thought we might do and figured we’d play it by ear:

Sock and stocking shirts, pants- I bought some ready made felt and fabric applique items to decorate
elasticized shirts
foam hats and flip flops
felt shoes
bags, watch, wallet
hair and other accessories

That was the original list. So far We’ve done sock items (dresses, skirts, shirts, and a bathing suit!) for Build a Bear and Barbie. I then made these shorts for my daughter out of a tshirt and decided that we should do that next. The girls asked  to do t-shirt skirts next, but as you’ll see that hasn’t quite happened. Eventually we’ll do skirts from sleeves and circle skirts.I asked the girls to bring doll/bear and junk! Unmatched socks, old ratty clothing or whatever their folks wanted to throw out. They are enjoying turning “garbage” into neat stuff.

If you are looking for a neat activity to do for a Bar or Bat Mitzvah that has both an element of fun and mitzvah, why not try a clothing swap? This idea has gained popularity due to the swap o rama rama type swaps where people bring clothing and then professional sewers, screen printers, embroiderers  and others volunteer their time to help people reconstruct clothing out of  pieces they wanted to throw away.

This could be a fun way for families to make some new clothing items for themselves, as well as for others. In addition, leftover clothing items can be donated to a local gamach or charity.

For instructions on how to set up a clothing swap visit the Future Craft Collective website for a  tutorial.

The naked Barbies was point A. Then my niece N was sick. My daughter and I went over to visit and do some projects with her for her Build a Bear. She’s pretty creative and the result of that was a really cute outfit out of a black sock and a sock flower embellishment.

In our neighbourhood, Build a Bears are pretty popular and clothing out of scraps from home was a big hit with parents, so our class was born. So far we are all enjoying it and everyone comes up with great ideas. I actually find it relaxing. Some of the girls are really getting into it and liked the idea of documenting what we were doing. They would also like to sell clothing that they make. I think it would be a great party idea with some clothing being made for hospitals or families in need.

I wanted to use a recent order to talk about the process of developing invitations and birkonim. For an upcoming wedding in August I sat down with the bride and we spoke about her style, her hatan’s style and I asked if she knew what she would like. This is usually the hard part, as many people do NOT know what they want. Often they have an idea of what verse they would like to use, or perhaps they would like to create a logo.

This is not a problem at all. I usually pull out my stock of invitations,  Jewish art history books and books on Ketubbot such as Ketubbah: Jewish Marriage Contracts of the HUC Skirball Museum and Klau Library. We then set aside things that the bride likes, the groom likes, the couple like in common. In this case I was only talking to the bride who relayed the discussion to the groom. The couple wanted something simple and had a verse selected.

I  prepared a selection of designs. I usually do the complete design myself, but in this case part of the design made use of an element from  opengraphicdesigns.com. Simultaneously we were also working on laying out the text of the invitation, choosing English and Hebrew fonts, making sure things were spelled correctly etc. After going back and forth a few times, the design as shown was chosen.

Below is the Hebrew text layout too. It’s cropped to protect the innocent on the web. The Hebrew font is a non-standard Hebrew font. 

We then started to work on the birkon design. Because the couple chose one color ink birkonim, we could use the same design in its entirety. The couple decided not to include the verse on the birkon cover, and instead included their names and wedding date. The couple sent the invitation design to a printer of their choosing, and the birkon cover design was sent to our printer. After a review of a proof from the printer, the cover is printed and the order shipped.

This chug or workshop evolved from a gift to my daughter of naked Barbies and because my niece was sick.

She received a bunch of hand-me-down toys (we love hand me downs- reuse, recycle!) including three Barbies, with only one outfit. While I don’t particullary mind when some of her other baby dolls end up without a stitch of clothing, I am not such a fan of naked Barbies.Â
I began to search for quick clothing options for Barbie. Since my sewing machine is still in storage, that meant crochet or handsewing. There are some great crochet patterns and sewing patterns available for free on the internet such as at bevscountrycottage.com. My goal was to use stuff I already had at home, I was mostly thinking about crochet since I already do toys for my daughter and her friends (think frog puppets around Pesach etc.) Then I stumbled on a few posts about using socks for Barbie clothing, and then doll clothing. My initial foray into Barbie sock clothing was a dress from a lonely men’s sock (see picture).
I then stumbled upon a blog with sock clothing suggestions and made the sweater that Barbie two is wearing, from a white sport sock.
My two year old was extremely pleased. I was actually surprised with how much she loved it. I eventually also made a skirt and sweater outfit. What I love about these outfits are they are really quick to make and fairly forgiving.
I showed the clothing to my nieces who really enjoyed the idea, but since my daughter’s Barbies were formerly their Barbies, it wasn’t per say a practical thing for them.

More about this next time…

I wanted to talk about a recent design project I did, and also plug the project! I think that it would be useful to my customers.

This project was a logo design for a new website Fun in Jerusalem. This is a site which provides information about family friendly activities to do in and around Jerusalem. Extremely useful for tourists and residents alike.

My contribution is just the logo design and business cards, but I have been checking the site out quite frequently to find ideas of things to do with my family and friends.

Check it out and recommend it to people who might find it useful.

I am thinking about changing the direction of the Birkat Chaverim website and blog a bit. This site was originally  started as a means to sell the second edition of the Bnei Akiva birkon and allow Bnei Akiva in North America to fundraise with the Birkon.

A website with only one item is sort of boring so I decided to add my own artwork and selected relevant artwork geared towards people making smachot. I did not add so much content and once I added this blog, I find that I see other aspects of things that I do that could compliment this site and this blog.

I therefore have decided to expand this site to include more of my artwork, art, craft graphic and web design, and Judaica research related activities through this site and blog. I will begin by talking more about a chug, after school activity I am running in my neighborhood in Jerusalem. I feel that this still compliments the original purpose of this site, since the activities we do would work nicely as activities at smachot such as Bar and Bat Mitzvot or family gatherings.

Today is the anniversary of the third year since Gilad Shalit was captured. 

A letter campaign was organized for father’s day to send letters and ecards to the white house. Its no longer father’s day, but letters can still be mailed to:

www.whitehouse.gov/contact

or sent by snail mail to:
Office of President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 

For more information:

Wikipedia article

Prayer for Gilad Shalit (pdf)

As you know, Birkat Chaverim was mainly established as a way to sell the Bnei Akiva birkon and provide different regions with a way to gain donations. I always liked the idea of using my designs for non profits to earn money.

I also like neat new methods for people to share or donate without too much effort. As I think of them or remember them I will post them here. To begin with, I wanted to mention an Israeli company, www.round-up.org.il. This company allows someone (to closely paraphrase) to round up an odd figure of a purchase to the nearest sum. They have a US site as well- www.round-up.org.