For The Love Of Solids Swap

(The Cotton Blossom Farm giveaway is here)

I told myself I was going to take the summer off from swaps.

But I didn't.

I saw on Flickr a new swap being announced - For The Love Of Solids and I signed up.
As the name suggests, you could only make swap items using solids, not even a teeny weeny bit of  pattern.

I know.

I tried to be a rule-bender

When I posted a piccy of the fabrics I was going to use, which included a small bit of black and white cross-hatch fabric (which I'd told myself was not really a pattern, I got a polite email from one of the mamas telling me I couldn't use it.

I felt the design I was originally going to use would look pants without that cross-hatch fabric so it was back to the drawing board and I came up with this.

My partner didn't exactly ask for a snake (oh, OK, she never mentioned reptiles of any sort) but as I was putting it together I thought it looked a bit like a snake coiled up and when I had finished it I just felt it lacked something. Six metres of black ric-rac, one bit of red felt, one blue and one of those sticky on eyes raided for my daughters' art cupboard and it was a snake.

My partner said her favourite colour was cerulean. I'm not ashamed to admit I had to look that one up in the dictionary - it's quite a vibrant mid-blue. So I outlined Mr Snaky in cerulean Perle cotton and made sure that the colour gradation lingered a while on more cerulean than anything else.

I wish I'd taken a picture of the back now because it was just plain white with one band of colour to one side - cerulean.
It's reached it's new home and seems to have settled in quite well.


In return, this morning the postman knocked on the door and gave me a parcel from Karen who had made me this

I love those shots of colour - very pretty.
Let's have a close up.

I don't know if you can see but the density of the machine quilting is incredible.

You can also see it better on the back.

She also made me this lovely little pouch.

Not sure what I am going to do with but it will be used, rest assured. Oh, and if that wasn't enough, three different solid pieces of fabric but they've already disappeared into my sewing room.

All gratefully received thank you very much Karen.

I don't know about others in the swap but I struggled with all solids. I thought it would be a refreshing change from going pattern bonkers but it was hard. Each time I put a combination of colours together I wanted to add just a bit of pop to it by adding in a piece of patterned fabric. And for me, when the group was at the early stage and everyone was posting pictures of the fabrics they were going to be using, after a while there are only so many piles of solid fabrics that you can comment on and get whipped up into a frenzy about.

All in all, it was a well run swap with some lovely things made.

Thank you to swap mamas Elizabeth and Megan.