Pouchy Love

Wow, where did the last 9 days go? Well I think it went in a flurry of parcel opening and sewing and nursing poorly children, there may have been a bit of a grown up sleepover with friends thrown in at the weekend, thank goodness!

The charms for the Rainbow swap rounds 1 & 2 have been flowing in! Its so lovely to have such wonderful fabric popping through the door almost every day. Some of the lovely ladies have been super generous and sent me thank you gifts for doing all the organising along with their charms.

See this pretty mug rug, made by the lovely Sarah at Chic Quilt Geek?

Well, its mine now! I am one lucky lady, especially after the cheeky fashion in which this arrived to me! Sarah very sweetly said if there was anything she could do to help me with the swap to let her know. I had just been looking through her photos and said she could send me the Lotta quilt she had made (I did say it was cheeky) I was kidding of course! But the wonderfully generous Sarah sat down and made this mug rug just for me! Thank you Sarah, I LOVE it!

Then another lovely Sarah, these Sarah's are very nice people, sent me a charm pack of Cape Ann!

 I just LOVE Cape Ann and its one that I keep putting in the online shopping basket and then taking out because I am trying 'to be good'. Sarah doesn't have a blog yet, but she should, especially with the lovely quilts in her flikr photostream! Hopefully there will be more soon using her charms from the rainbow swap when I sent them out.

I also got a few other goodies, I am a lucky lady, thank you all so much. I must say that it may be some time before I run another swap, they do take over with all the sorting, paperwork/speadsheets and postage payment collecting/organising. Hopefully the remainder of the charms will be here soon and I can have the two corners of my sewing room back! Plus it is a super test of will power having all that wonderful fabric within reach!

When I've had a few spare minutes I've been filling it with 'checking off the list sewing'

I made my blocks for the Sew.Happy.Quilt QAL and I am now up to date, hurrah!

And most importantly I have been practicing pouch quality control ready for my Mouthy Stitches swap. The wonderful Nicky set the ball rolling with her commission, that's right, I got a commission! She kindly commissioned me to make a pouch to go with the Needlebook I made her in Cindys goodie swap last year, all in aid of my Fat Quarterly Sewing Retreat Fund, isn't she lovely!

So I set to work to make her the best pouch I could possibly ever make (hopefully)

Eeek, look at my horrible stained ironing board! Actually, don't! Just pretend you cant see it ;-) Look at that cute Dala horse instead! I knew Nicky loved Dala horses and I had the perfect Lecien fabric for her.

I filled the pouch full of thank you goodies for Nickys order and sent it on its way, I was very pleased that it was so well received and I'm hoping not only to meet Nicky in person at the retreat in June but to see her using her pouch and needlebook too!

No sooner had I sent my first commission out, I received another! This time the lovely Lucy at Charm About You commissioned me to make a pouch to celebrate the awesome Fugly Fabric Party she is hosting over at her blog - go and see it, you wont want to miss it and the fugly fun!

I had such a hard time making something with fugly fabric, I wanted it to be so fugly it was cool, but I worried if I didn't get it just right it would be just plain ugly!

There is a bit of fuglyness on the back too, apologies to anyone who has and loves any of these prints, to me they are fugly! Well except the black spotty with pink flowers, I couldn't help but let a little niceness creep in!

I hit the fugy jackpot when I found this lining lurking at the bottom of my stash, I have a bit left over which I may offer up in the fugly fabric party!

This one is off to Lucy and of course I have another to make for my secret swap partner, 3 pouches and not one to keep for myself, that won't do. So of course I made myself one!

I am really pleased with how it turned out AND I get to keep it! It also checks one of my boxes on the Finish Along  because I have been procrastinating on how to use this fabric panel I made last year for months now. I think that it why I love it so much, I am pleased I did the panel justice!

And on the back I used some of the lovely scraps (much nicer than what I have in my stash) I have been sent by bloggy friends in various swaps.

So now I just need to go off and plan out my partners pouch for the Mouthy Stitches swap, after a bit of serious stalking that is!