Swap-O-Rama

I swear, after this no more swaps for a while. Love doing them but I think I went a little over board in signing up for so many. And I am a slowly and carefully type of gal (well that's my excuse & I'm sticking to it) so some of these took far longer then I had planned.

This is from the Cooking With Kids Swap & this little package flew all the way to a new home in the USA with Nuttnbunny. The apron is double sided with a hand-applique Gingerbread Man on the front and chocolate brown cotton backing - the pattern is my own (very simple) design.

The binding was a bit tight around the bottom corners, so that it doesn't sit quite flat. Despite my best use of my secret weapon - the steam iron - good for covering up or minimising all sorts of minor stitching faux pas. Perhaps the corners are to small/tight for cotton binding? So much to learn!

This set went to Sam of Four Bags Full for the Work-at-Home-Mum swap & included amongst other goodies a side-snapping hemp/velour/denim cloth nappy featuring machine & hand appliqued toadstools and a shimmery gold fire-fly. Yes, I promise I'll give the toadstool theme a rest....sometime soon.....

The matching basic cotton knit t-shirt (Ottobre Design) was jazzed up with my first ever go at Freezer Paper stencils and fabric paint It's been all the buzz in blog-land for a while now and I could not believe how easy and effective this is! For what it's worth, I thought I'd have a bastard of a time finding Freezer Paper in Australia but discovered that they sell it at Spotlight - too easy. You just need to ask them to cut a length at the counter.

And then there was this - finally in the mail yesterday and I can breathe a sigh of relief that I'm ALL DONE! It's heading for Vanessa of Cute Tooshies, as part of the OzClothNappies Christmas in July Secret Santa Swap. Any excuse for a swap, hey?

The nappy has a core of of the new 'wonder-fabric' bamboo and microfleece lined inner. The outeris made of navy cord with a hand applique/embroidery of our favourite bedtime duo; "Mama Moon & Baby Star". Lolly is rather obsessed with looking at the Moon & Stars up in the sky at night time and has always called it "Mummy Moon". Here's a little song that I made up to sing to her before bed;

Here comes the Moon, lighting up the Night

Here come the Stars, all twinkling in the Sky

All the little children are going to their beds

To close their tired eyes & rest their weary heads

I hand dyed some Organic NZ Merino 8ply yarn to match, using food coloring again. Except the colors didn't turn out quite right as I didn't steam enough so the navy didn't really 'fix' and after a few washes it fixed at a final colorway of lemon, light blue, turquoise with grey flecks color. I think it knitted up really pretty anyway, although I might experiment with winding the skeins for dyeing so the colors a bit more random next time.

This was actually my 2nd every knitted garment and my first every (completed) knitted soaker using Alice's Free Soaker pattern. Talk about ambitious with a swap deadline looming, eh? It took me the better part of a week of crappy night-time TV to finish, but I got there in the end.

If anyone would like some of this yarn colorway I still have a 150g ball available for $15 (which is really just the RRP for the yarn itself) plus postage. It's a lovely and soft organic merino & the colors would be very sweet for a little boy, I just don't have a lot of use for that color scheme myself in our girly-whirly house.