THE SYEDA SISTERS: Hijab

Tuesday tutorial: No stitch shrug

4/29/2014

Asalamualaikum sisters!

Apologies for a late blogpost! My laptop broke down recently and I was completely cut off with the blogging world :( I hope it gets fixed ASAP I got lots of things to do with my blog layout ^_^

Today I'll be sharing a simple tutorial of a lovely draped shrug made with a long scarf or shawl that's been sitting in your cupboard for ages maybe?

And the best part is you don't need to stitch it up *~* just a few knots and you've got yourself an elegant looking shrug that'll go well with every outfit!

Also it's a perfect modest wear if you think your sleeves are to fitted or short!

So let's begin!

I used a old black & white striped shawl used my mom once. Shockingly it is 106 inches long and 20 inches wide & that's maybe the reason why it was sitting in her closet for years o.O .

You can use a shorter one, but make sure it's rectangular in shape.

1- Fold the material in half, length wise.

2- Hold the top of the two ends (A & B) and tie them into a knot.

3- Tie another knot to secure it.

4- Now this is what it'll look sideways. No.1 is the closed end right before the loops that'll act live sleeves. No.2 is the open end which you split creating the front part of your shrug.

5- it will look something like this after you open it.

6- place your hands through the two loops like so :-

7-now you'll have a draped shrug in front of you. If you want you can stop there and wear the shrug in this style or you can continue by following the image below. What I did was flip those draped pieces behind my shoulders like the arrows below show.

8- now depending on how much material is hanging in front that created the drape, you can adjust how long or short you want it to be from behind.

9- adjust from the front as well so it looks equally elegant.

And VOILA! You've got yourself a quick and super chic shrug that goes well with everything!

I hope you like today's tutorial, do try it out and let us know how it went!

Till the next post,

Stay happy sisters <3

Love,

The Syeda Sisters

festival

You are cordially invited to...

1/28/2014

Assalamualaikum

So if you are following us since Day 1 of our blog you've probably have an idea when we started doing hijab.

Now living in a Muslim country we didn't face the challenges many Muslim women faced in non-Muslim countries.

Before we donned the Head scarf you'd be surprise to know that we really didn't feel the need to wear it even though we were surrounded by proper covering muslimah's in our everyday life.

3 Years ago if you'd ask us about when we'd do hijab, we would tell you that we wear it only when performing Salah or other acts of worship or perhaps at a Islamic lecture. We did however dress modestly, Alhamdulillah so we really didn't think it was necessary to wear the head scarf when ever we went out, little did we know what we were missing out on.

Modesty is Beautiful.

So this is how it all started:

Omaimah (The younger Syeda Sister) started reading articles about sisters around the world sharing their experiences on doing hijab. Now we did want to do hijab one day, but not right now, maybe after we perform hajj ?

Interestingly everyone had a different story to share; some wore it because they were asked too, some sisters stopped wearing it & some wore because they saw others wearing it. They never really knew why they're suppose to wear it at first?

What they all had in common was after their experiences of wearing the hijab they felt the beauty of the hijab, they saw the hijab beyond the stereotypes such as "oppressed" laid by the society , media, etc in the name of modernism & freedom.

Mrs. Universe supporting World Hijab Day

And they understood why Allah (SWT) blessed us Muslimah's with such beautiful gift.
All of them took pride in it and the sisters that once wore Hijab because someone told them to too or they saw others wearing it, now wore because they knew it was their right too. They felt empowered and it boosted their confidence and it also increased their faith in Allah (SWT).

And the sisters that stopped wearing it, started wearing it again because they could feel the difference now.

The real modernism, the real freedom was the Hijab.

Hijab an obstacle? we don't think so!

We had the Iman rush ,you can say, after reading their stories, we asked ourselves... "When will we be able to perform hajj? and will we even live to do our first Hajj? we don't even know about tomorrow, how can we be so sure about 20 years from now? is this really what is stopping us?"

That's when we knew its time.

The first place Omaimah went with the hijab on was the Grand mosque, to meet up with a friend who volunteered there.

"I remember it was an orange pashmina... the only proper scarf I had at that moment and it was ridiculously bright, now when I look back at that time, I realize what a bad idea it was lol. I should've gone for a darker tone. I can't recall my feeling's exactly at that moment but I remember how respected & happy I felt, and I know I might be over exaggerating a bit but I kinda felt like a Princess :D".

You must be thinking what the title of this blog post have to do with our story?

Well we're Inviting all our readers, whether Muslims who don't do Hijab yet and Non-Muslims to walk in our shoes for one day, on the 1st of February and see for yourself why we choose to follow a totally different attire while the rest of the world follows another.
What's the initiative behind this day you ask? watch the Story behind World Hijab Day by its Founder Nazma Khan http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fgohZYqbmE

You are Cordially Invited to Join us at World Hijab Day!

If your not sure about it then how about Start with a trial?
We are pretty sure that all of us have some sort of scarf hanging around in our closet., just put it on, it doesn't have to be perfect , a few hair strands left out ..its fine . Now look at your self in the mirror and see how you feel at that moment. Tell a friend and ask her to join you to feel more confident perhaps.

It is estimated that 1 million Women around the world will be participating at this years World Hijab day on 1st February 2014 so join the challenge and post a pic of you with your hijab and your experience at http://worldhijabday.com/submit-story/ and Like their Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/WorldHijabDay

Sharing is caring :)

We hope this blog post gave you some inspiration & we will love it if accept our invitation!
Please invite and share this event with every women you know for "Better awareness, Greater understanding. Peaceful world"-Nazma Khan

For more information log on to www.worldhijabday.com

Till the next post,

Keep calm and wear Hijab <3

The Syeda Sister.

designs

Pakistani Wedding Look Book -Winter

1/25/2014

Assalamualaikum

Is winter officially here?
Just when it becomes warmer here after the dreadful cold, it rains out of the blue and Voila its freezing again! -_-
So we recently found out that there's a Wedding happening in our extended family In Sha Allah in a few weeks.
Now the first thing that comes to our mind and what probably comes to every girls mind is "What are we going wear!?" .-.
Being Pakistani, we get our traditional outfits tailor made for most Weddings & also for Eid.
We keep modifying the typical Shalwar kameez on every occasion depending on what is trending locally,
but clearly seeing how much the temperature is falling these days, keeping yourself warm in those traditional wear and looking pretty is quite a task!

So basically today we'll be blogging about what could be worn this winter at weddings. So let's begin!

Mehndi day 1:

Designer: Adnan Pardesy

PFDC Sunsilk Fasion Week 2013

Designer: Nida Azwer

The PFDC Sunsilk fashion week

Designer: Tena Durrani

Fall 2013 collection

Shaadi (wedding) Day 2:

Designer: Feeha Jamshed

Model : Mahira Khan

2013

Designer: Tena Durrani

Bridal wear collection 2013

Designer : HSY

PFDC L'oreal Paris Bridal Fashion week

Valima (Reception) Day 3:

Designer: Tena Durrani

Collection: Formal wear 2013

Designer: Adnan Pardesy

PFDC Sunsilk Fashion Week April

Designer: Tena Durrani

Collection: Bridal wear 2013

Designer: Adnan Pardesy

PFDC Sunsilk Fasion Week 2013

As you can see most of the outfits looks a lot like an evening gown.

They're paired with either a short or knee long coat that will do the task of keeping you warm! Whereas colors wise what's IN are Pastel colors that are paired up with brighter shades, =)

We love how the designers kept most of the dresses, Modest by not making the silhouettes obvious and keeping it long and flowy.
We hope this blog post gave you a little idea of what you should get tailored for upcoming winter wedding season.

till the next post,
Take Care
Love
The Syeda Sisters.

Eid

Nouman Ali Khan LIVE in Bahrain!

9/05/2013

DIY

Tutorial Tuesday : DIY hijab/Scarfs hanger.

7/17/2013

Asalamualaikum!

You must be wondering what Tuesday tutorial means, well it's pretty simple every Tuesday In Sha Allah we will be posting a tutorial that we made or we found on the Internet! Now we don't promise a tutorial every Tuesday each week cuz sometimes we get tangled in other things apart from our blog so we might not get enough time to blog.

So since today is Tuesday we've come up with our first ever tutorial ! ^_^ I hope you guys understand the steps!

Now if you remember last time we blogged on different ways you can organize your scarfs/hijabs ( http://www.thesyedasisters.blogspot.com/2013/07/how-to-organize-scarfshijabs.html)

and We mentioned three ways, one of them was to tie them in a normal everyday hanger we all own.

DIY Hijab organizer

We tied them in a neat way and most of you probably have an idea how to tie them like that but just in case we thought we'd give a little tutorial for those who didn't get how we did it!

It's actually pretty simple, We learnt this technique few years back in Oprah Winfrey's show and it was actually how to wrap it around the neck during winter, we're just implementing it on a hanger :)

step to step tutorial.

Checkout omaimahs monkey arms lol xD

You will need a hanger, 6 scarfs or more depending on the material of scarfs, and a pair of hands lol !

Now here is the step to step tutorial-

1) Fold your scarf into half.

2) Place your left hand in the loop that is created when you hold the loose ends with your right hand.

3) Place your left hand behind the opening of the hanger

4) Bring your right hand towards the hanger upwards

5) And enter your right hand through the loop that you made in step 2

6) Pull the ends of the scarf through the loop with your left hand

7) Pull it all the way till the ends of scarf come out of the loops and forms a knot

8) Now when you leave it, it will fall downwards, pull the ends of the scarf down to make the knot tight.

9) Switch the hanger on its opposite side and hang it ,Voila !

Now there is of course one drawback, untying the knot every time you want to wear it, but if you're like us who hang there scarfs behind the door, somewhere where it's visible to our guests if they enter our room you would probably want to make it look neater, but if you hang them in your closet you could go with this -

DIY scarf hanger source Google

My mom found this on the Internet, if you don't own shower hooks/rings and you're Asians like us you could use old bangles that don't fit you anymore , they work just as well!

But you would need a sturdy hanger for that, so it's totally up to you, whatever you can get a hold of in your house.

So that's it for today, hope you guys liked our tutorial ^_^ and if you have your own way of organizing your scarfs/hijabs please do comment below!

Love,
The Syeda Sisters.

DIY

How To Organize Scarfs/Hijabs!

7/06/2013

Assalamualaikum!

It's going to be almost 2 years since we started doing Hijab , Alhamdoulillah!

At first we really didn't have any scarfs to match with our outfits or at least make sense with what we wore! We had 4 of them in total and they were very random in color- golden, beige, orange and black, black and beige were our only favorites ! ^_^

Any who, fortunately there was a sale going on Max and Lifestyle so we grabbed every scarf we saw without thinking twice, which was very dumb of us cause some were just useless we hardly touched them since we bought them -_- like the square jilbabs! =)

And so we now have almost 40 of them (Yay Us!) but man it was hard to keep them in order without all of them getting tangled or creased up and of course the difficult part was to choose which one to wear! *_*

Since many of you scarf lovers and Hijabi sisters out there might be facing the same problem like us. We will share a few ways we usually organize our hijabs /scarfs to make it look neat and easy to choose!

The best and the easiest way to organize is to get a hold of the multipurpose hangers, like the purple loop one and the blue layered one shown below! We got the purple multipurpose hanger from Home Center for around 600 fils on sale, originally priced around 900 fils ^_^ , and we already had the blue layered hanger which we previously used to hang our pants on :D lol

We spotted both of these in Home Store as well.

Now the purple loops multipurpose hanger I spotted in an Ikea magazine a few years back and I really wanted it, the ones we've got now are not a ditto copy of the Ikea version cuz there are more loops in it unlike the Home Center version and so you can hang more scarfs in a single hanger (y).

You simply pull one end of the scarf through one loop and the other end through the loop below and same for the blue layered hanger, this makes it easier to choose the scarf you want to go for, or you can tie the scarfs around the normal hangers if you can't find the multipurpose one like in the picture posted below.