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New Year! First Ever Swap!

New Year!

Alright, a New Year means I try this blog thing again. Life is a lot less hectic now so hopefully that will lead to more blogging!

First Ever Swap!

I am a part of my first ever Swap! It's the Instagram Studio Ghibli Swap hosted by Sew Scatterbrained and I am super excited! For years I've seen the bloggers I follow participate in swaps and all the lovely items they make and receive! Now I actually get to participate in one and I couldn't be more excited!

I received my partners information over the weekend and have been quietly stalking her and hunting for ideas. She's a swap veteran and has therefor provided me with tons of information to go on and a super stocked Pinterest to scour over.

To my partner, if you visit this blog: I'm sorry if my information was lacking! Please forgive this newbie, I hope to be able to provide you with more info over the coming days. But note I am super easy to please :)

I have two ideas that are bouncing back in forth in my brain for my partner, both based off of items I saw on her Pinterest account, and one item I am going to make no matter what.

Idea #1


I found this gorgeous piece of art work by BumbleBirdStudio on Etsy bouncing around all over Pinterest. I love the geometric shapes coming together to make easily the most iconic Ghibli character of them all. And of course my brain wants to turn this somehow into a pieced mini! How cute would that be?!

I could use either proper Totoro colors or use a selection of my partners favorite colors/prints. There's also a few ways that I can imagine executing this but either way it will involve applique of some sort. We also share an interest in the flying geese block which I could make quite a few of to mimic rain and use it as the background. 

This idea could take several different directions in itself and has the potential to be overly complicated. I will have to be careful and grounded to make sure I get it right!

Idea #2



Aren't these hoops adorable?? I love them! This would be my other idea where I would create various hooped applique pieces of her favorite characters to hang up and do as she likes. She really likes the cat Jiji from Kiki's Delivery Service and I haven't been able to get an applique version of him out of my mind since I first started looking for inspiration!

The hard part here would be the fact that this would be the most applique I would have ever done in my 3 year of quilting! I've only done small amounts of machine applique and hardly any hand applique. It'd be great to get some practice, but I'd also hate to hand over something for the swap that I would feel was less than awesome!

Idea #3 and not optional
Photo from MooseMarbleDecals on Etsy
Soot Sprites!

She is getting hand made soot sprites with her package no matter what! I found a few tutorials for pompoms and felting that I'm going to read through but a Ghibli swap would not be complete without these little cuties! I absolutely love the soot sprites!!

Swap Goodies Ideas

She is a fan of chocolate and has a cat. So definitely going to be providing related items for her! She also mentioned a few of her favorite fabric designers as well as notions so I'm going to see if I can find something interesting that she either doesn't already have or wouldn't mind having another!

So there you have it. Let's kick this new year off with an awesome swap!

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