Stitching Santa 2017 progress

I have been gathering suitable gifts, most with a sewing theme, but a couple of surprises too, for the Stitching Santa swap/exchange, hosted by Sewchet which I'm taking part in.  My parcel will be going abroad, so I need to get it sent off soon, so that it will arrive before Christmas.  Part of the fun is not knowing who is sending the gifts to you.

I have made a little fabric storage box, using a tutorial from SewforSoul, which can be found  here .  It was a great tutorial, easy to follow and I enlarged the pattern just a little to make a bigger version.  I used the fabric which I bought to make a doorstop back in 2015, which you can read about here.  So far, it has made a doorstop, a notebook cover and now a fabric box.  I used fusible wadding to give the material a bit of added strength and that was a first, but was easy to sew through and worked well.

It could have just a little bit of the inside material showing, as above,  but Chris thought it looked better with a bigger amount on show, so that's what I did.

I used some green cotton material for the inside which worked really well, picking up the green on the outer fabric.  I am really pleased with the result and hope that the recipient will like it too.

Seasons swap - Wow!

 I do enjoy a good blog swap, as my lovely followers will know, so when I saw the Seasons Swap, organised by Kimberley of Creative Chaos, I signed up.  It was a great idea - find out your swap partner's favourite season and then buy and make things to send them.  I was partnered up with Maria, from Dotty's Daughter .  We emailed and found out that we are scarily similar, even down to our ages!  Maria told me that she didn't have a favourite season and I responded that early Summer was my favourite.  So, armed with some information, we started shopping and making.  Our parcels were swapped and I received the parcels above.

 I opened them to find a plethora of gorgeous gifts.  Maria had been so generous!  Flowery bunting, tulips, felt squares, felt flower pegs, a heart decoration, buttons, a gardening themed scissor fob and a personalised patchwork pincushion with sewing charms,

 The patchwork pincushion deserved its own photo.

 Bunting, buttons, hearts and flowers...

...and the gardening scissor fob, complete with welly!  I emailed to thank her and received a lovely reply, but she also said that she had forgotten to add in another part of the parcel so that would be sent too. Lucky me - two parcels!

 Here's what was in parcel two.  Lots of sewing goodies including needles, pins, ribbon and some patchwork for me to start.  There were also seeds and a dragonfly bracelet, some cat clips and some angel decorations made by her daughter.

 Here are the angels - aren't they lovely?

 Here's my patchwork project for the autumn evenings...  A HUGE thank you to Maria for her amazing generosity, thoughtfulness and kindness and for being such a lovely swap partner.  As I was opening my parcels, it did strike me how we had sent similar types of things.

Here's what I sent: Spring (magnets, seeds, a scissor fob/keyring/bag charm and bird material), Summer (a mug, magnet pegs, some sewing machine material and a piece of the London material, (which I used to make a doorstop for my friend in Canada) as she used to live in London), Autumn (hot chocolate, a spiced candle, a notebook and some pens) and Winter (a felt heart, monochrome bracelet and earrings).
It was a marvellous swap to be involved with and I really enjoyed it.  Thanks to Kimberley for organising it and of course, to Maria.