Christmas swap

In addition to all the crafting I did for others, I did some for a swap with my arty friend Hilary (who you may remember me swapping with back here). Before the holidays, she came to me with the best idea: If she bought a yard of Spoonflower math fabric, would I make things out of it for her math professor boyfriend? How could I say no?!? I'd been dying to get my hands on some Spoonflower for a while, and Hilary is just the best, so having more of her art in my possession is always my goal.

So, what did I make? The original plan was to make him a tie, but once the fabric arrived Hilary and I both agreed that the scale of the formulas was such that it would not work out. Instead, I made the following:

• Laptop sleeve following this tutorial
• One of my many hippos
• Wrist cuff following instructions from Seams to Me
• Coffee cozy following this tutorial
• and bonus: flower brooch from this tutorial

So, how was it? The tutorials were all really great. I especially fell in love with Anna Maria's loop-de-loop technique for making the button loops on the wrist cuff. The one thing that was not so great? The Spoonflower fabric! (I know, right?!) I have been wanting to love this fabric ever since I heard about Spoonflower. I know they used to print their quilting-weight cottons on white Kona cotton fabric. This other stuff has a nicer hand for sure, and a smaller weave, but was really difficult for me to stitch through. My machine hated it and kept skipping stitches, no matter how many times I cleaned and rethreaded the machine. I tried every needle I had and finally landed on one that worked well fairly consistently: My metallic thread quilting needle. Odd, no? But it did topstitch really well.

I'm still waiting for my exchange from Hilary, which will be some sort of painting. I left it up to her and told her it's not a rush at all, so I'm not anxious about it. I know how crazy we all get around the holidays! I'm still recovering. Now I'm almost caught up with my Christmas crafting blogging. Just one more big reveal and we can move on to the more mundane day-to-day crafting. I'm kind of looking forward to that. Aren't you?