My First Craftster Swap

I recently took part my in my first ever swap over on Craftster. I have long admired all the awesome things posted in the swap gallery and have wanted to participate in a swap for ages!

It was the UK Only Swap and I was paired up with an excellent partner, who shared my love of hoops, which was great!! So this became very much a hoopla swap.

Here's the set of hoops that I made -



I came up with these three hoops after reading through my partner's questionnaire. They were great fun to make, even if I probably would never have come up the idea of making them without this swap.



I was given a link to my partner's favourites list on Etsy in her questionnaire. I spent ages looking through the many favourites, and this hoop is based on a lovely art print I saw on there. It is made entirely from felt. I added buttons to the moon as my partner said she loved them. The little stars are french knots done in two strands of thread.



In the questionnaire it said that my partner was going to be volunteering at the Olympics in London this summer, so I thought that it would be nice to make something as a reminder of this. I drew the pattern onto cotton, the hoops are stitched in two strands of thread and the writing in three. It uses mostly back stitch and satin stitch. The satin stitch on this took forever as it was so tiny. I wrapped the hoop in ribbon to make it more colourful.

Here's a close up of the satin stitch on the hoops -



I'm now in the process of making another 2 of these hoops!!! So no escaping the tiny satin stitching just yet!!



This was the third and final hoop that I made for the swap. My partner loved birds and bright colours so thought this would fit that theme. I found the inspiration for this whilst browsing through Etsy. Stitched on yellow linen, with felt applique for the branch and birds eggs and the birds are done using back and satin stitch. I wrapped the hoop in black ribbon as I thought it looked better than leaving it wooden.

Usually when I make hoops for my hoopla wall I don't bother to do anything to the back of them. Seeing as I knew the backs of these would be looked at, I thought I had better make sure that they looked neat and tidy, so I did this -



I was really pleased with how these hoops all turned out, and thankfully my partner loved them too. The package I got from her in return was TOTALLY AWESOME!!!! I absolutely loved all the hoops she made me -



My list of likes and interest was pretty epic. She decided to work with one theme - mermaids, and then run that through several other themes on my list. Those being Harry Potter - one of the mer-people, Disney's Little Mermaid, and a Lady Gaga inspired mermaid. I love them all and they look awesome up on my hoopla wall.

I really loved my first swap and have definitely got the swapping bug - have already signed up for my next one :D

Vicki xx