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

The Pirate Santa Embroidery is Finished!

I finished the pirate santa! I spent about six hours embroidering last night, primarily working on the swap project and then finishing up the pirate santa. I'm not sure if it's due to the curves or the black outline on the really dark navy fabric, but I really dislike embroidering letters. It's not fun at all. I finished the main character of the santa over a month ago. All I had to complete was the letters, yet this embroidery project has sat in my workbasket for over month.

The letters are finally complete. Now that I'm looking at the photos I think I might fill in the word rum with a light green. I haven't fully decided. I'm tempted to just leave it as it is. 

Colors Used: 

413 | 321 | 975 | 699
3852 | 905 | white |black

In other exciting news, the swap project is almost done. I just need to embroider one little piece, about an inch in width. All of the foreground and background is complete. I spent about four hours trying to finish it up last night. I didn't manage to finish it all, but it was incredibly close. Now I need to decide how or if I'm going to decorate the small 4" hoop. Then I can send it off to my swap partner.

Part of my push to get the swap done is because my swap partner has already finished her hoop, and sent it off to me! My swap partner sent me this adorable butterfly! She chose the colors incredibly well. Look at that gorgeous satin stitch!

The purple flowers remind me of the wisteria we had at the house I grew up in. My dad built an arbor in front of the house and planted wisteria. Within a few years wisteria had completely taken over the arbor and the surrounding fence. I love the smell of wisteria in the summer. The flowers were simply beautiful.

My first swap

I've joined an embroidery swap on Craftster! I joined the site many years ago, and while I'm relatively active in the forum I had completely forgotten they did swaps. When I posted my owl in the Completed Projects board several people encouraged me to join the upcoming embroidery swap.

I thought about it for several days. Money is very tight, and I'm still trying to find a job. When I do find a job I'll be working a lot of hours, leaving less time for crafting. Add in the holidays and needing to make Christmas presents and I wasn't sure I could commit to a swap. However, it's a mini-hoop swap. The hoop has to be between 2"-4". A regular sized hoop would be too much, but a small one I can definitely do!

Photo by http://www.etsy.com/shop/beckarahn - Check out her stuff, it's adorable!

Signups end on Dec 7th. The last day for mailing the hoop is Jan 10.