This year was my first year participating in Sanae and Ute's annual Secret Valentine's Exchange. This was their 4th annual SVE. This year there were 426 other makers from around the globe who joined!
What fun to be a part of such and amazing conglomerate of creative folks! If you follow me on Instagram you've already seen what I received from Lindsey two fantastic Charley Harper zippy pouches and fudge!
Today, I thought I'd share what I made for my Secret Valentine...
My Secret Valentine was Julie, from Our Chez Nous. Lucky for me, I'm already an avid follower of Julie on Instagram and almost immediately I knew that I wanted to sew her up a bag of some sort so that she could tote her knitting from ice rink to ice rink...
I sewed up the smaller of the two Stowe bag sizes in canvas "Bound Cheshire Feathers" by Art Gallery thinking that it'd be perfect for tossing in her latest knitting project...
And added a pop of neon orange in the binding...as she said that she liked orange.
Inside the bag I added a little leather loop snap to hook keys or what not if needed...
And a sweet little birdy tag...because why not?
Being that she's Canadian...and figuring that one can never have too many cold weather gear items...I also made an upcycled pair of wool mittens...
I used my Sweater mittens tutorial, my new serger and the same wool knit from these "woolies" to make them.
I added some little blue felt flower appliques too...because blue is another of her favorites...
And, since I was a little bit behind in getting started I thought I'd use a car trip to NYC to stitch up a cross stitch necklace/key chain...
I say necklace/key chain because I couldn't quite figure out which was best...I left it up to Julie, though she says that she can't decide either!
It'd been ages since I'd stitch one of these, the last one was a rose but this one I wanted to make more geometric and "modern", while also adding in Julie's favorite colors...
I got a note from Julie the day after she received her gift saying that she loved it all! Phew! I was so happy that she enjoyed her gifts!
February tends to be so crazy between our birthdays and Valentine's day and I hesitated to sign up, and I do admit that my gift arrived a couple of days late...but it was so much fun "stalking" and planning and making and wondering and gifting and receiving that I'll likely do it again next year! Not that I'll plan ahead next year and I'll likely be tardy once again...but still!
