Last month I had a little bit of a destash of some of my “ugly” fabric…
It wasn’t all ugly, but it was fabric that I had way too much of for the amount that I could see myself ever using. Aka the stuff that I bought in a crazy sale when I’d first started sewing – and before I’d learned the wisdom to only buy fabric I love, not just fabric because it’s cheap! {I’m pretty sure many of us have learned that lesson the hard way }

Anyway it turned out that my friend Susan was coincidentally doing the same thing to her fabric stash. After blowing her out of the water in a little “who has the most ugly fabric” competition {I won- hands down by the way!} we decided to do a little trade…


This is what I sent Susan:

Hope you don’t mind my “borrowed” photo Susan 😉

Pretty bright & garish… but Susan likes colour!

This is what Susan sent me…

This swap makes it so clear that one person’s “ugly” is another persons treasure because Susan feels like she got the better end of the swap & so do I! There is even one fabric in her ugly lot (the blue floral lace print in the top right) which is just beautiful and I totally can’t wait to make it into a purse!! The rest will be good blenders etc… when I need a few lighter prints for things.

I had no problem getting rid of the rest of my uglies. Some went to friends locally and I also sent some to another blog friend Jenni. She agreed to send me some fabric that she had surplus in return, although I had no idea what she was sending me until it arrived. When it turned up I squealed & then totally felt like I’d ripped her off by sending her my unwanted fabric (she did know what I was sending her though) but getting sent these in return…

3 Kokka fat quarters & a dolls face which I’ve been wanting to buy for ages and ages! As I opened the package a very excited Hannah yelled at me “LOOK MUM – it’s pink “fagrouc” and a DOLLY!” {For some reason Hannah can’t say Fabric… she says it Fagrouc. It’s very strange for a kid that otherwise talks perfectly!} So we were very excited and I’m sure will find a good use for them as soon as time allows. (It will likely be one of their Christmas presents at this rate LOL…)
Another good example that what one person has no use for (Jenni has 2 boys) can be another person’s treasure!

Swapping uglies gave me a bit of a taste for swapping I think (or receiving pretty mail did anyway!) and since then I’ve somehow fallen into a bunch of other swaps. None of them I particularly sought out – they just all seemed to happen…

These gorgeous feature prints are all the way from Denmark. Sent to me by Dorte who I met through the Pretty {little} Purse swap on Flickr. I made a comment of how much I loved the car print on one of her photos so she Flickr mailed me to see if I wanted to do a swap. Aren’t they all gorgeous! I have already used fussy cuts of them several times – so you might recognize them from some of my recent projects 😉

2 swaps from Leona in the USA:

Leona is a bee friend from my bee Sew & Bee-Happy. She approached me and asked me if I’d like to do a trade after she saw my photo in Flickr that I’d listed for Dorte to choose her swap fabric from. Leona has a fabric stash to die for so she didn’t need to ask me twice! LOL… (even though I was left wondering how come I’d not known that people even did swaps for so long and then suddenly within a week of knowing about them I was already involved in 3!!!)

Many of these fabrics are out of print and hard to get. She was also exceptionally generous and even though of my girls – sending me a whole bunch of beautiful eye-spy squares for my girls eye-spy quilt. There is 1 for each letter of the alphabet. How generous & thoughtful!

I am also in the process of another private swap with Jamie Lee in the USA. Jamie Lee is one of my “support crew”. We got talking a while ago about the price of fabric over here and she offered to send me some from the USA. I suggested instead that we do a swap. So far this is what I sent her this week:

The left packet is blurred out because I want it to be a surprise for her…

I’ll let you know what I receive when the time comes

So thank you so much everyone for such great swaps!!! 

I have also started to finally receive all my parcels that I ordered off Etsy last month so it really has been a month for receiving exciting mail! Love it!!

Have you ever participated in a swap before? They are such a good way to make friends and (apart from the postage) are a really fun, affordable way to get new fabric…