Showing Off: Stuff I've Made for Swaps

Time to show off some of the stuff I've made lately for swaps.  I was going to break this up into two posts but that seems silly so it's all going into one handy dandy post.

First up, I had to angel the swap I hosted.  One of my participants flaked on another (just didn't send anything, no contact, nothing--and now they're partially suspended, so they suck) so I had to stitch up a dotee doll for that poor soul.

Another kitty, siamese of course.  He turned out pretty darn cute.  I was even able to re-use a bow I pulled off a stuffed toy I made over for a Regretsy swap (oh, I do have to show that off, too--guess I will be doing two posts today).

Next up, for the Stuffie/Plush swap.  I just had to make a stuffed toy that was about 6 inches tall.

Funky monkey!

I was going to make him some wings so he'd be a cute version of the flying monkeys from the Wizard of Oz (my partner likes Wizard of Oz) but when I got the monkey done (and was making the coat and hat) I realized he was a bit smaller than I had expected and there really wasn't room for wings.  That and he turned out so cute I didn't want to ruin him by trying to tack some wings on after the fact.  The pattern is from one of the Japanese craft books I have (but the clothing is my own handiwork--I really like the fez if I do say so myself).

Last but not least, some Teesha Moore style patches for a Colorful Teesha Moore swap.  The idea was to make three patches (any size) in the colors your partner noted they liked.  Thankfully, my partner gave two color choices and said they weren't super picky so any colors were cool too.

Her choices were teal and raspberry.  I don't know about you, but "teal" is one of those vague colors to me.  I might think something looks teal but someone else won't.  Raspberry was a bit easier (a light pinky red, the shade of the fruit).  Sadly I didn't have much in the way of either color in my stash but I did find some fabric that had a bit of raspberry in it.  My partner also noted she liked "shiney" and "animals", so that gave me a bit more to work with.

That's the whole set.

Now for closeups.

I got this fabric as an extra in a recent swap and when I saw my patch partner liked "gardening" I felt it kind of worked.  I really liked how the fabric looked like a little painting, so I didn't want to add too much to it.  I just added some embroidery here and there.  I put french knots on one of the apple trees and added green lines to the leaves of the other one.  I back stitched all the roads, filled in the windows on the top house, filled in the roof on the middle house, added some brown highlights to the brown grass area, and added mixed green fill stitch to the tree on the lower left.  Just a bit of stitching to make you pause and look at the patch a bit more, trying to find all the added elements.  The backing is just some generic gingham type fabric.  I didn't want the frame fabric to stand out and draw too much attention from the "painting".

This is the shiny patch.  I wanted to use some of the cool shiny fabrics in my stash and this one went well with some elephant fabric I had in the FY14 Charity Sewing Challenge remnant box.  (yes, I'm adding this patch to the list of items made from the box fabric).  I used three different colors to fill in some of the details on the elephant.  The back fabric is a black with a great big gold flower (embossed? I'm not sure the term for fabric with shiny stuff added--I know there's a term for it but I'm too lazy to look it up).  I used the same colors for the frame stitching.

Last but not least the wee little patch.  This one actually has some raspberry colored fabric as the background and some shiny in the ric rac leash and some flecks in the frame/back fabric.  The dog is fused to the back fabric and I added a french knot for the eye.  Super simple patch but I think it's pretty cute.

All of the patches are stuffed with acrylic felt.  I love that I have a whole drawer of it and it's excellent for patches.

Everything went out in the mail a few hours ago, so I hope it's all well received.