A purty bag of fabric

Something about the idea of swaps, I find them very hard to resist. So recently, when I saw a New Zealand-based fabric swap announced, the Postal Stash Rehash from Small Town Stories, I couldn’t help myself, and signed right up to it.

Just for the heck of it, I signed up for the $9 bag swap option. It was pretty exciting getting the email telling me who I was sending a big bag of fabric to, and their preferences. Bright colours, florals, polka dots, vintage, retro, cotton fabrics, and no brown or purple. Easy! Wish I’d taken a photo of the pile of fabric I sent them, but I completely forgot to. I can tell you however that (going from memory) it had mainly cotton fabrics – mint green with polka dots and cake printed on it, bright orange cotton drill, neon yellow cotton, bright blue, some white blend with textured narrow stripes running through it (a vintage fabric), cream tshirting with a little floral design all over it, and I’m pretty sure there was something else floral in there as well but I can’t remember what. Anyway, I crammed as much as I could into the bag, and then had to take out a length of fabric when I went to send it coz I’d over-filled it and it was too heavy. Oops! I’ll put that one aside for the next swap. 😉

Know what’s funny? In all the excitement of putting together a parcel for someone else, I completely forgot I would be getting a parcel too! So it was a rather exciting surprise when it ended up on my back doorstep one afternoon when I got home from work. Yay!

And oh, what a gorgeous parcel of goodies it was! Check out this fabulousness:

• About 2 metres of a semi-loose weave, medium-weight vintage cotton with flowers, checks and squares, that I’m going to turn into either a jacket or a skirt.
• About 2.5 metres of a vintage green/white floral – not really sure how to describe this one. I think it’s a cotton. It’s like a very fine corduroy, but the raised cord sections aren’t really raised up. If that makes any sense at all?!? Anyway, I foresee a skirt in the future for this one….
• A small scrappy length of vintage blue floral cotton. Trim on a skirt or fun pocket linings will be the fate of this piece I think.

A bunch of fun panels of fabric!

• A section of vintage cotton with three embroidered floral sections on it
• A panel of heavy-weight cotton with two rabbits and a turtle
• A hand-painted cotton panel with a rocket ship blasting off

• About 1.5 metres of a green and dull grey-pink patterned shirting weight fabric with a design of circles, lines and oblongs all over it. Which, since it’s shirting and the right length, will almost certainly become a shirt.
• About 2.5 metres of green with a green/black stripe running through it. A nice lightweight cotton, this one’ll probably become a dress.
• About a metre of something slinky and pretty and lightweight with swirly designs all over it. I have no idea what I’m going to turn this into, but it’s pretty and the texture and weight combination makes me smile when I handle it.

• I think this is my favourite of the bunch – a vintage/retro red/yellow/white/blue/black plaid with poodles in the blue squares! (Seriously, how awesome is that?!?) There’s about 2 metres of a narrow length of this, a nice lightweight cotton. I’m thinking a shirt out of this one, since there isn’t enough for a dress.
• And another fab print – white with red zips and pins all over it! There’s a fat quarter of this quilting cotton, it’ll probably become fun pockets at some point.
• Four spools of thread – two vintage tan ones, one sparkly metallic blue (what can this be used for, anyone know??), and a silky orange.
• A Winter 2011 edition of Get Creative magazine.

Seriously, I had SO MUCH FUN pulling all these goodies out of the postage bag! They just kept on coming, and I kept exclaiming in joy and bouncing around like a kid at Christmas. Only happier, coz this was MYSTERY FABRIC AND IT WAS ALL FOR MEEEEE!!!!!

*ahem* Yep. Fabric makes me happy.

I’m hoping that the parcel I sent my swap person makes them happy as well. (Does anyone else get super nervous that the person they send something to in a swap won’t like it? I’m always such a bundle of nerves about it! Madness.)

My fingers are itching to get started on making some of this up. Only, where to start? Which one would you like to see made up first? Choose for me, lovely people!!