Lots o' swaps: Quilt blocks, dotee, and bag

I have two posts this morning.  First up is the miscellaneous one showing off a bunch of stuff I completed for swaps.

In no particular order:

Crazy 9 patch swap:

I kept one of each and swapped the other two.

You may notice they aren't exactly alike.  (I'll get to that in a minute)

I made another black and white set but used different fabrics.  The penguin and diamonds I picked up on my last fabric buying before I started my new year fast.  Remnant bin for the win.  The polka dots were just in my stash.

These fabrics were from the Fabric Worm scrap bundle I recently reviewed.  They just go together.

BUT. . .these blocks aren't exactly correct.  The pattern is wrong because I didn't swap the layers out the proper way.  The pattern should have similar fabrics going three down diagonally then three fabrics looping (corner, side, bottom and top, side, corner--like in the black and white block).  Clearly, this block isn't following that pattern.  BUT I still like it so I sent them out.  If someone complains I'll make them a new block.  But I think the fabrics work so well together that the pattern change up isn't a big deal.

Next up:  Dotee Doll

Black and white dotee doll to be exact.

Full body showing hangar and tail.

Closer view.

Face shot.  The glasses cast some funky shadows so these pictures are extra crappy.  Go me!

The eyes are two sequins stacked with a seed bead.  Simple was the theme.  Per the swap the face could have some color if we wanted but I wanted to make the whole shebang black and white, so I did.  Heck, I even mailed it in a white envelope with black ink and used a black and white note card inside (it was the front of a card someone sent me, I like to cut off the front if it hasn't been written on and re-use them as swap labels).

Patchwork back.

Last but not least:  Poochie bag.

Full shot.

Close up trying to better show the colors.

The gray is an ashy shade and the pinks are bright.  The pocket is a purplish pink that compliments the skulls.  Normally the straps would be a different print but when I was pulling fabrics I couldn't find something that looked good and I had enough of the skull fabric that I just decided to make the straps the same fabric as the bag shell.  I like the finished product, though my machine was not happy.  I had to stop and oil it and swap out the needle (before starting this project) because there were so many layers of fabric to sew through.  Even then, the machine was still complaining a bit (but still making nice stitches).  I also had a bobbin incident.  I'm still not sure what caused the problem but I think it might be a poorly wound bobbin.  I wound a new one and it was fine so I'm not sure.  I may go back and try to figure it out or I might not, depending on if I want to irk myself.  (the problem was the bobbin threads were coming out all loopy and even jamming a bit--the bobbin was in the case correctly but the machine was just not liking it for some reason).

OK, I'll have another post in a few minutes.  I'm off to the post office now to mail out a mass of swaps.