A few months ago I signed up to swap-bot, a website that facilitates swaps.  I liked the idea of using my fabric remnants to make things for other people and the excitement of waiting for unknown parcels arriving in the post.  When I was umm-ing and ah-ing about signing up I asked my boyfriend to dissuade me from joining some swap groups and the best argument he came up with was that I might get gangrene and then my legs would fall off, so I took the risk.  So far things are going well.  I haven’t lost a foot, never mind an ankle and two swaps in my partners have both liked their packages.

(I had planned to take photos of the packages I’d recieved to put alongside the pictures of the things I’d sent, but I whilst I took pictures before I posted my packages I haven’t had time to photo the things sent to me, sorry.)

The first swap I signed up for was a handmade eyemask swap.  My assigned partner’s favourite colour was green and she described her garden in her profile.  So from that I made her a mask from a green patterned cotton for the outer fabric, soft blue/green jersey (cut from a long sleeve t-shirt I refashioned) for the eye side and stuffed with cotton batting and dried lavender flowers.  I felt that I was taking a wee bit of a risk with the lavender, some people love it whilst others hate it, but my partner loves her garden so I thought it was a risk worth making.  As it turned out she liked the lavender lots.

I hadn’t really used elastic tape before that so that was my ‘new thing’ in this project.  I’m pretty happy with the way it turned out but looking back at it I wonder if I should have quilted the three layers together, although maybe that would have been a faff due to the lavender flowers.

The second swap was all about zips.  The idea was to make a zippy bag/purse and fill it with 4 things for the sewing room.  My assigned partner liked blue and chocolate brown, and black and white, ribbons and buttons. From that I decided to make a box, zippy bag (as much for my own amusement because I hadn’t made one before).  I used this tutorial for the box-bag, it was lots of fun to do and I’m very pleased with the way it turned out.  However I wanted to line the bag and that wasn’t included in the tutorial.  I used the blue and white spotty fabric that I used in my robot bag but my brain couldn’t handle how to make the box with a perfect lining so I ended up treating the outer and lining as one and pinking the insides where necessary (sorry for the lack of internal pictures).

I filled the bag with a big chocolate coloured button, a roll of blue and brown ribbon, a packet of cute pins (with coloured stars, moons etc. on the tops) and I made a needled book and a small pincushion (because I’m coming to the conclusion that one can never have too many pincushions).

Whilst I’m rambling I’d like to mention a work related thingy.  I’m mentioning work because of the aesthetic pleasure one aspect of my job gives me.  I study the influenza virus and one way I do this is by growing airway cultures that model and mimic the cells in our respiratory tracts.  To push dust and mucus and pesky microbes away from the lungs, and up and out, the trachea is lined with cells whose top surface is lined with cilia; little fingers that beat in time and direction pushing everything away from the lungs.  I love watching these cultures under the microscope.  They remind me of sea anemone in rock pools.  Watching the cultures always makes me smile (and I have a dance to mimics the cilia that tends to make others giggle, albeit at my expense).  I wish I had a movie to show you.  But still, I love the image of sea anemone lining my trachea, beating away to keep my lungs clean.