FO Friday – teal coin purse

Ok, so I’m a day early, but I couldn’t wait to show this off.

I don’t participate in many craft swaps or gift exchanges.  Often because I have difficulty meeting deadlines for craft projects with such a limited time to work on them.  Despite that, I signed up for the Craftaholics Anonymous – Handmade Gift Exchange last month.

This is the 8th exchange they’ve done – and there will be another in November if you want to sign up for that one. I love the fact that there is no price or skill requirement – you just need to make a handmade gift of some kind and send it to your partner. That partner will in turn send you something! How do they manage all that giving and receiving? They set up a gift exchange through Elfster. It facilitates grouping people (you can even have “secret” pals), you can anonymously ask questions of your partner and even have wishlists.

My draw was Beverly from Texas. I asked her a couple of questions and found out she likes teal blue and her style is more vintage than contemporary/modern. Perfect! I set to work on making her a crocheted coin purse:

Does the pattern look familiar?  I’ve made it a few times before – first as a regular “hobo” bag, then as a coin purse – and then I added a cute little bear to the mix. I thought about including a bear in my gift package, but I wasn’t sure if I’d get it done before the July 1st mailing deadline.

The thread color is called Parakeet – how fun!  When I was at the store picking up a zipper to match, I spotted this cute fabric remnant that was on clearance!  How perfect is that?  [yes, I probably had some fabric in my stash that would have worked … but, clearance people!  I can’t pass up those red stickers] Again, my sewing skills need serious improvement as you can see with the left-end of the zipper.  Plus, I planned the whole thing so it should have been large enough to hold a credit card or driver’s license … but somehow the lining “shrunk” on me and it wasn’t that big.  *sigh*  I’ll have to try to do better next time.

Over all, I think it turned out rather cute.  At least it received several oohs and ahhs from friends when I showed it off before mailing.  I sure hope Beverly likes it!