Secret Valentine 2018

Hi there!

I want to apologise a little for this post; I actually wrote it nearly a month ago but then life happened and I just plain forgot to post it. Which I wouldn’t normally bother about except this one includes thanks for a lovely gift someone made for me, which makes my memory lapse feel a little rude. So, apologies. Sometimes life just does that to me.

This post is about my contribution to and gift from the Secret Valentine Exchange this year.  This international community event is organised by Ute and Sanae each year and there must be a huge amount of work involved in organising gifts being sent flying around the globe.  The deal is that you receive details of someone to send a gift to; someone else entirely is given your details and sends you something.  All gifts are to fit into a small package and you’re encouraged to make using your stash.

I signed up kind of out of habit this year and then had a little bit of a panic about how much I already had on.  But then I talked myself down, helped by the receipt of a prize from Sew Now magazine.

I was sent 8 rolls of glitter fabric from one of their giveaways.  This stuff is kind of weird, in that it comes in a little box in a set length, but it looks gorgeous.  Weight wise, it’s like a stiff canvas which has been coated in glitter on one side, and it’s not suitable for washing; this is definitely a crafter’s item rather than a dressmaker’s.

I decided that anyone could use another bag for sewing things, so chose to make a boxy zip up bag which was in Simply Sewing mag’s Christmas edition last year.  The bag was fully lined and featured a little tab on the outside in a contrast fabric, which I liked the look of.

My recipient liked blues, greens, natural fabrics (sorry about that, not much natural about wall to wall glitter) so I found a fat quarter in an off white printed with outlines of leaves, rabbits, foxes etc and chose the navy blue glitter to go with it.

I quite liked the construction of the bag; whilst relatively simple, it included some nice details like hand stitching binding onto the lining inside to hide the seams created when closing the bag up.  There’s also that little contrast tab which I think is really cute!

I added some chocolate to the bag in the form of a large bag of Heroes (because everyone should have something nice to fuel their sewing) and also picked up a little pair of Merchant and Mills bow scissors when we were in Liberty’s a few weeks ago.

My recipient was kind enough to post a video of her opening the gift on Instagram and I really hope she’s enjoying it.

In return, I was blown away to receive an item of clothing! This has honestly never occurred to me; it feels like a very brave thing to do indeed.  I guess publishing my measurements on my site has been quite useful!  I put that I liked purples, greens, blues etc and received this beautifully made Burda top from Maria; how gorgeous is this?

So, once again, this has been a lovely experience.  Thanks so much to Sanae and Ute for all their hard work!

Did you join in?

Becca x