I love swaps and when I see a really fun theme, I have a really hard time saying no! I couldn’t pass up the Studio Ghibli swap organized by Felice from Sew Scatterbrained.

There was a pretty long time between getting our swap partners and the deadline so it was nice to not be too rushed. The downfall was that I did wait on a lot of things because I felt like I had so much time and then did scramble a little in the end, but I was able to still get it in the mail a little early.

I started this No Face embroidery hoop right away and then got the news that my original swap partner was removed for not responding to emails. Thankfully my new partner still listed Spirited Away as a favorite movie and No Face as a favorite character so this project could still go ahead as planned, but I had to change up my other ideas. I love making felt embroidery hoops and I think this one turned out really well.

The pouch was one of the projects that I had to change direction on when I got a new partner, but I am really happy with how it turned out. I made a similar one for Nicole for the &Stitches Secret Santa swap I did last year, but this time I did patchwork rectangles instead of hexagons. I looked through my partner’s Instagram feed and tried to pick fabrics that I thought matched her style. I love the bright pink zipper I used. I used PurlBee’s simple lined pouch tutorial and I think I’m finally getting the hang of it. I got heat transfer material last year during Silhouette’s big black Friday sale, but this is the first time I used it. I had a hard time choosing a character and pose that I felt was identifiable enough with just the silhouette, but I think Totoro worked really well. The heat transfer is really neat and I am definitely going to be playing with it some more!

My partner had a blog post about the swap and her excitement over soot sprites made me want to include them! I got this candy from Mitsuwa, a Japanese grocery store in Arlington Heights, I think it looks like the little stars they carry in Spirited Away. I used fabric squares I had leftover from the Advent calendar pockets that I made. Most of the needle books I saw online had long rectangle pages that were sewn down the middle and folded over, but since my pages were square I attached them all with a blanket stitch binding on the outside. On each page I included some cute pins I had.

Hot Topic has a ton of Totoro and Kiki stuff so I took my first trip there since high school to procure some buttons. I also got a couple for myself! I also shared some of my favorite matcha milk candy, also from Mitsuwa and I even shared one of my match Kit Kat*
After I went through the ones that Kimberly gave me from her trip to Japan, Josh ordered my more on Amazon.

I haven’t gotten my package soon but hopefully it will come this week and I can show it off! And I still have several more swaps in the near future to finish up, so you’ll be hearing more about this soon!

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