Since I’ve been reading blogs, I’ve seen a lot of ‘swaps’ taking place. People making and ‘swapping’ aprons, knitted dish cloths, recipe exchanges, secret recipe swaps etc and I’ve taken part in a few of the cooking ones but never the craft or sewing ones. When the delightful Ros from Sew Delicious decided to host a “Sweet Pouch Swap” I wanted to be in it. I hadn’t sewed for over 12 months because my sewing machine was on the blink but I inherited my Mum’s machine and just never got around to plugging it in.

When Ros organised my partner, Jenni from All Things Fabulous, the ‘brief’ Jenni wrote about the things she liked was:

“I love pink, sparkly things, poodles, reading, Amy Butler Belle French Wallpaper, and stars. Gracious, this is harder than I thought. If it’s bright, cheerful, preppy, or neato, I’ll love it.”

By taking part in the swap also meant that I wanted to try and just use fabric from my huge stash. I didn’t have much pink or sparkly but when I saw the above pink tartan type patterned fabric, it looked kind of ‘preppy’ to me and I thought I’d try and make a pouch into a ‘preppy’ type skirt. The zip I used was a recycled zip my Nanna must’ve pulled out of some garment a long, long time ago as it was in her stash. My Nanna pulled out every zip, cut off every button and probably used the actual material from the garment for either cleaning rags or upcycled into another garment.

I haven’t got a tutorial because I was literally flying by the seat of my ‘pouch’. It’d been a while since I’d lined anything let alone put a zip in so I just kind of just went along with it. I had a bit of ribbon and a brad to ‘sparkle’ it up a bit but I wanted something more.

I found this little guy online and thought he’d just top it off and fitted with Jenni’s love of sparkly and poodles.

I just added some Australian ‘candy’ and popped it in the post.

And look what I got! The lovely Lucienne from Minnesota, USA made me two quilted pouches, which are just beautiful and are being put to good use in my handbag for all sorts of bits and pieces.

Lucienne also popped in these beautiful Godiva chocolate coated pretzels and Starbuck’s Hot Cocoa mixes (which didn’t last too long).

I thoroughly enjoyed taking part in this swap and a huge big thanks to Ros for organising it all. You’re just the best. You can check out all the amazing pouches that were made here and follow Ros at Sew Delicious for another swap to come.