swaps

This is a busy embroidery month as I'm doing two swaps. The first is organised by Wild Olive, it's huge there are over 100 people taking part! My head spins when I think of poor Mollie trying to keep tabs on all those swappers. We are swapping one 4 inch hoop, I used a pattern from this book but ignored the stitch guide as it wasn't a filled in design.
The chest on the bird is my first ever attempt at needlelace it was semi-succesful but some of the holes are a bit bigger than others. Overall I'm pleased with the finished piece although it's not really my style. I picked a design and colour palette that I thought my partner would like and it's a bit too pale for me. I wish I'd tea dyed the fabric because I think that would have looked nicer. You live and learn.

As a little extra I made this Wild Olive style badge- too cute!

The other swap is on Craftster and I'm not going to post photos yet as I think my partner might just look at my blog and I don't want to ruin the suprise. I'm really looking forward to sharing what I've made though- I challenged myself a bit and it really paid off. Stu wanted to keep it and has told me I have to make him one.


I used to do a lot of swaps, in fact some of the best things I've made have been for swaps. I like the way it forces you to do something different. it always makes me focus on getting my stitches neat too, when I know someone else is goung to inspect them! The best swaps for me are themed because you end up making things you'd have never made otherwise. A while back I did a Phat Quarter swap (the flickr group from Mr X Stitch) which had a movie theme. I ended up doing this Twin Peaks Firewalk with Me piece which was so much fun to do that it was actually quite hard to part with.