Super Secret Embroidery Swap Project

I sent out the super secret swap project, and my swap partner has received it! Unfortunately I mixed up the date (I thought the send outs were 1/15) so it's a few days late. I feel really horrible about it. It was my first swap, and I'm one of those swappers. As soon as I discovered my mistake, I emailed the moderators and my swap partner. Hopefully she's not too upset with me. Fortunately, I'm very proud of the project I created for my partner, so at least I won't be a swapper who sends a project that they spent 20 minutes on.

I used a design I found in her wist. I saw that her wist had a lot of gnomes and several rainbow projects. I decided to combine the two.

The most time consuming part of this project was the roof. I filled it in using parallel rows of backstitch. The window is done in satin stitch.

I used this great tutorial in order to cover the back of the hoop. I traced the inner hoop onto the green fabric, cut it out, sewed it right sides together with a 1/8" seam, turned it right side out then ironed it. Between sewing the seam and ironing the backing ended up smaller than I would have liked, so next time I'll trace the outside of the outer hoop. That should leave me more allowance for the seam and ironing.

Before I sewed the two green pieces of fabric together I embroidered the name of the swap and my username on the back. Next time I need to do the embroidery first, before I cut out the circle. Trying to embroider a 3.5" piece of fabric was not fun. I used my tiny 2.5" embroidery hoop but I had to keep moving the hoop as I stitched additional letters. This made my letters really wonky. I definitely need more practice embroidering letters.

The outer hoop is outlined with a rainbow braid. I wanted something to tie the colors together, and emphasize the fact that it's made with colors of the rainbow. I braided one piece of red, orange and yellow together, three pieces of green together, and one strand of blue, indigo, and violet together. Then I braided all of them together, creating a fantastic rainbow braid.

I really hope she likes the project! I spent a lot of time on it and I was almost tempted to keep it!

Colors used:
550 | 820 | 702 | 973 | 721 | 304 | 718