Caught up with my exchanges.

Like many of you, I enjoy participating in swaps/exchanges and other activities where you send your work to other people, and receive theirs in return. The "Stitchin' Fingers" site has many groups, and the members of some of the groups have individual swaps on the go. For instance, the Cross Stitchin' Fingers group present has a Round Robin in process. The Textile Artists Trading Cards Group has a monthly exchange, where someone chooses a theme, and members sign up to go in that month. This month the theme is the colour Jade, and my contribution to be posted to Marja in The Netherlands is this: I've taken a few liberties with this; the theme is actually Jade + 2, meaning we are supposed to stick to the theme colour, but add two more colours. There are more than two colours in the peacock fabric, but gosh, I don't think the ATC Police will hunt me down, do you?
This ATC is a one-to-one swap with Cobi, also in the Netherlands. She was offering to swap one of her ATCs with anyone who was interested, and as I liked what she had to offer, I emailed her, and we arranged to trade. She said she likes lace and embroidery among other things, so I'm hoping this will appeal to her. I used the corner of an old embroidered handkie, which was damaged beyond repair, and added the gingham fabric, lace, and pink beads.
Finally, the Fabric Postcard below is destined for Brazil. On the Stitchin Fingers Fabric Postcard Group, we are running a birthday exchange. I hold the list of nine people, with their birthdates and addresses. When someone has a birthday coming up, I email the other members on the first day of the month to remind them to do a FPC for the birthday person. My FPC for Heloise uses a piece of a necktie (the floral bit), surrounded by scraps in matching colours, with a button, sequins and beads on one space. The stitches I've used to embellish the seams are cretan (over the ricrac), buttonhole, fly, feather and herringbone. I really enjoy these little projects; they give me the opportunity to practice embroidery stitches that I would otherwise not be using on a day to day basis.