Hope you join us! I just started making them after seeing the tutorial a few months ago. The swaps really are a lot of fun, and it's fun to be creative on a such a small scale, with something new and different each time you set out to make one.
I've read that some people use stiff felt for the innards. I may try that in the future and see if my sewing machine likes that better than the stiff pellon stuff. Until then, I'm going back to stitching them by hand, I think.