Getting Personal

One of the most rewarding experiences of blogging and being an active member of Flickr is that I have gotten to know some truly amazing and gifted people—my participation in do. Good Stitches {a charity bee} has been no exception. The women in the Faith circle of DGS are strong, beautiful, faithful, and extremely talented. I try to read their blogs and watch their Flickr photostreams to see what they are up to on a regular basis but, as with most of my blog reading lately, I've fallen behind.

That's why when the idea of encouraging community within each circle of the bee was floated to the hosts, I jumped on the chance to try to foster and develop more relationships within our little group. After gauging interest and garnering feedback about what we could do, we pretty collectively landed on the idea of a pouch swap.

My hope for this swap was that the 10 participating members would take an opportunity to really look at their partner's Flickr page, blog, and other information to try to get to know that person a little better which might make them feel more connected to the group—I really hoped some new friendships would flourish from this opportunity.

Personally, it was nice to get to read my partner's likes and see her favs, read her blog, and visit her Etsy shop to see what she is up to. I was paired with one of the newer members of our circle, Jennifer (Jennspen) and she gave me no lack of inspiration for her pouch! I truly hope she loves what I came up with for her.

After reading through her ISOs, I decided I wanted to create something that incorporated as many of them as possible. I landed on the idea of using the pezzy prints, scallops from Bonnie & Camille's Bliss, and then supplemented with some other color and white prints that coordinated.

I did a little bit of sketching (lovely sketch, right?) and trying to figure out the best way to create a pouch that could be thin and flat or expand to hold a skein or two of yarn and some knitting needles—one of Jennifer's requests. I really, really wanted to use a metal clasp for the closure but, alas, my order from Japan never showed up—I ordered nearly 6 weeks ago. So, after deciding on some colors, I decided to move on from the whole metal clasp idea and landed on the above sketch which was loosely based on the construction of a little Fossil makeup bag that I love to use.

Because I waited so long to start in hopes that my shipment from Japan would show up, I only had a few days to finish the pouch. I even took it to work with me to stitch on during my lunch hour—grateful I did, too, because I had some stressful work days that week and stitching really calmed my nerves!

In the end, I was pretty happy with how the whole thing turned out. I am pleased to say that it turned out just fine . . . and even more pleased to say that I didn't end up using any patterns to create this little pouch. It may not have the most perfect construction or the precision that I might have liked, but it fell together nicely and I hope that it will really get some good use by Jennifer!

It ended up being a nice opportunity to dig in and really get to know one of the DGS members better and encouraged me to spend more time getting to know the other ladies in the Faith circle. What a special process!