What I've been up to this week....

1. Sorting my embroidery floss and stuff (top left)

2. Trying a new embroidery pattern (top right)

3. Let the computer do the colouring for me/thinking about a new freebie/again thinking about selling prints and cards (bottom left)

4.Sewing two stacks of coins and cutting another two stacks (bottom right)

oh and made a Alphabet Tree Boy embroidery pattern on request! (not pictured)

Hope you are having a creative week too!

Several owls and one Koala

Fabric designer Saffron Craig just released two new items: the adorable Owls in Trees fabric is now available in a lovely chocolate brown colourway and how about these cute Owl and Koala softies?

Owl and Koala are ideal if you want to give a hand made present but are a bit pressed for time and/or lacking in sewing skills. They come in a 50 cm piece of fabric which includes both the Owl and the Koala (front and back) and the two little strings of Owls and Koala's you see in the picture. I'll be ordering them for sure! I also read that there will be a $10 gift voucher for newsletter subscribers, so head over to Saffron's website if you are interested!

Kind of scary

The state of my Embroidery box is kind of scary at the moment: it's a full of works in various stages of progress, finished embroideries, patterns, needles and floss lots of floss. Floss that needs to be put on bobbins, extra skeins of my favourite colours, an Ebay bargain bag full of Perle cotton (I read that you could use it for hand quilting so I bought it just in case I feel the urge to start hand quilting...), little plastic bags with assorted colours I'm using for all of those WIP's... I hope your embroidery work and supplies are beter organised! Do tell me how you keep your floss, patterns and finished embroideries. Or send me a picture!

P.s. don't forget to take a look at the blog of the Hand Embroidery Network. I love their Stitch A Day posts!

Bruges

No Sunday Stash today but some pretty pictures from Bruges (or Brugge in Dutch/Flemish). I spent the last couple of days in this beautiful Belgium City and just returned home. We stayed at a lovely hotel, did a bit of shopping, visited a museum, ate some delcious food and most of all simply enjoyed walking through this historical town! How about this amazing horse fountain  (if that is the correct word for it) where coach(wo)men still get water for their horses. And if you like chocolate you will feel right at home in Bruges, there are almost 50(!) Chocolate boutiques. Of course I had to bring some Belgian Chocolate home with me!
:)

And a totally unrelated 'gentle reminder': I will continue the free pattern offer (which I send along with purchases in my shop) until the end of this month, so that's only 3 days! But....according to rumours from the Forest there will be a special treat soon for Bunny newsletter subscribers so sent Mr. Squirrel an email at FollowtheWhiteBunny@e-tropolis.nl and he will add you to the list!

Stacked coins

I was trying different patterns with the 6 inch squares I had cut but I wasn't sure how to proceed when Georgia (do check out her lovely quilts here) suggested I could make a Stacked coins quilt with them. So within the hour I cut my 6 inch squares in half and started stacking those coins! 

I found this very useful Stacked Coins tutorial on the Moda Bake Shop website. The Moda Bake Shop offers 'online recipes which you can use with the wide range of Moda Pre-cuts' (but I'm pretty sure it will work with other fabrics as well ...) There are many lovely free quilt tutorials there to explore and some useful tips on how to use your charm packs, honey buns, layer cakes and sweet boxes.

New quilt for Autumn

Last week I felt I needed to start quilting again soon. The quilt I made earlier this year has become a favourite item in the living room  so I know a new one will be used and loved too. I started cutting 6 inch squares without a plan and as I went along I started to pull out more brown and orange fabrics from my stash. Must have something to do with Autumn which seems to be fast approaching now. Both brown and orange are definitely not my favourite colours but with these lovely Denyse Schmidt, Heather Ross and Joel Dewberry designs they look fabulous. At least that's what I think.

I'm still not sure if I need to add another colour, blue maybe. I bought a tiny bit of Heather Ross' Far Far Away Blue Unicorn fabric which I think could look lovely with the other fabrics. Or maybe some pink?

Have you seen my cutting mat by the way? No, well neither have I! I'm pretty sure it moved with us but I haven't found it yet. So I took a piece of left over Marmoleum flooring and used that instead. :) I will need a new one of course and a new blade for my rotary cutter too. I haven't replaced it since I bought it. They are so expensive. I'd rather spend the money on fabrics!

Amy = Awesome!

 

Yes! Something very special in the post for me today: Amy Karol's brand new book: Bend the rules with Fabric. I have been a moderator for the  Bend the Rules sewing Flickr group, dedicated to projects from Amy's first book Bend the Rules Sewing, for quite a while now. And this was a fabulous gift because of my involvement in the group.

I'm a huge, huge fan of the BTRS book. It helped me gain confidence in sewing. Because of that book I took my 'first steps' into sewing quilts (the easy lap quilt). And I made several aprons from it, some wonky turtles and even a puppet theater!  I also love Amy's Angry Chicken blog, so funny and real.

Bend the Rules Fabric is all about personalising your fabric by printing it, embroidering it, watercolouring it, transferring on it. It looks just as pretty and not-intimidating as BTRS , with many lovely photos. I have only had a chance to flick through it, but several projects already caught my eye like the bedsheets with Scherenschnitte design, and some awesome looking t-shirts. I just hope I can get my hands on some of the materials mentioned in the book  I mean: Freezer paper, huh? Phote EZ starter kit? Surely the members of the Bend the Rules Fabric Flickr group can come up with some European equivalents.:)

Moroccan cookies

It's not a very crafty post but I had to share this picture with you. My moroccan neighbour said she'd bring me some cookies. So I thought maybe 4 to 6 cookies, but I got this lovely stack of cookies instead! Apparently my neighbour thinks I can eat this within the next two days. Mmmm...I already had three cookies so I'm off to a good start. :)

Sunday stash # 16 Hand dyed embroidery floss

I'm not sure if you can call this a stash technically speaking but I'm very excited about this lovely hand dyed embroidery floss so I could not wait to share them with you. Next Sunday Stash I will show you a proper fabric stash I promise. Anyway I bought this floss in this Etsy shop. With floss names like Ceder, Moonlit sky and Fairyland.you can't go wrong can you? I can't wait to use these!

Pindsvin or Adventures of a Danish Hedgehog

Here it is my new pattern called  Pindsvin or Adventures of a Danish Hedgehog. He is floating about in my Etsy shop! Pindsvin will find his  way to your electronic mailbox until sunday noon for the special promotional price of only $3 ! After that Pindsvin will float to you for $ 3.50. And during the month September there is still that cute pattern of the Girl and Bear decorating a Tree which I send along with each purchase!

p.s. thanks for all your input on the last blogpost! I have included a short resume of the stitches I used with the pattern.  :)

Progress is slow & opinions please!

I thought the hedgehog in the cup would make a cute embroidery pattern so about 2 weeks ago I started drawing, then last week I began stitching but progress has been sloooow. I made some odd stitch and colour choices so I have been unpicking more than I have been embroidering. Wait...that isn't possible...but it feels like that anyway. First Hedgie was floating in a pea-green sea (not a good idea) in a cream coloured split stitched cup. I unpicked the split stitch and used a back stitch but the cream colour still did not look good  because of the naturel cotton colour of the fabric. So I re-stitched (if that is a word) the cup in a lighter shade of blue which is a much better choice. The only thing that worked out fine instantly was the red/white border for which I used a whipped back stitch.

Now this Hedgie pattern tryout got me thinking and I am wondering if I should add something like a stitch or colour advice with my patterns. Or on this blog. What do you all think?

Carson Ellis

 

I must admit I had never heard of Carson Ellis before I bought the oh so cute Sublime Stitching Pattern designed by her. I love the Russian Bird design and the shirt I embroidered it on is one of my favourites. Anyway I found out that Carson does lots of illustrations for the Decemberists (her husbands band, I like their music, bought the cd) and on Flickr I found this lovely work of art  ( the bear picture) which I adore. 

So when I received my copy of The mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart the other day  I was happy to learn that the book was illustrated (not the cover I just realised just the book itself) by Carson too, so Carson is all over the house now! Looking forward to reading that book by the way, even though I'm pretty sure it's not written (only) for grown ups. :)

O.k. a totally unrelated afterthought: I came across this story on Craftfail (yep a website for all your failed attempts at crafting)yesterday and I laughed until I cried, it was so funny! Maybe it will make you smile too.

Something old, something new

 

In my new 'old' embroidery book I found the perfect stitch to make waves. It's called the scroll stitch and it wasn't too hard to master. I put the book (and the diagram) upside down because I'm left handed and it actually worked out just fine! Look here and here to learn more about the scroll stitch. 

On the photo you can see a little bit of the new pattern I'm working on. It involves a hedgehog, a teacup from my grandmother and a teaspoon. :)

Rumours from the Crafty Forest....

You can now sign up for the Follow the White Bunny Mailing List if you want to hear the latest rumours about Follow the White Bunny Patterns! Send an e-mail (or a pigeon) to FollowtheWhiteBunny@e-tropolis.nl and me and Mr. Squirrel (who is the most talkative in our team) will inform you regularly (but not too often) about shop news, freebies and new patterns. The Big Bear will guard your email address and will not give it away (or worse sell it) to other creatures.

In the mail today

 

The Stitches of Creative Embroidery by Jacqueline Enthoven. This book was recommended to me by Ann Mary who made such a lovely version of the Princes and the Pea embroidery recently. I've put it on my little embroidery table to try out some new stitches soon. The book looks a bit outdated on the inside, it was published in the sixties and it looks like it too, but there are so many lovely stitches to learn from this book that I don't mind that too much. This new Embroidery book by Jenny Hart (on my wishlist) will make up for any lack of cool on my bookshelf!

For any of you left handed stitchers out there: my new embroidery book says to 'turn stitch diagrams upside down and follow the letters'.

New Alice Pattern is here!

Yay! My new Alice pattern is in the shop as of today. Julia Frickert (aka JulieFrick on Flickr) did a great job of test-driving the pattern. I especially like the slightly freaky Blue Caterpillar! Remember I will send you a cute free pattern with each purchase! :)

Sunday stash # 15 Ribbons & trims

 

Here are a few ribbons from my stash. Among them are the ribbons I bought last week when I was in the tiny store in Amsterdam with the huge collection of trims, tassels etc. I also received a couple of extremely cute ribbons in swaps. I rarely use ribbons when I sew. Partly because I'm not sure what to do with them and also because I find it hard to part with some of them and would rather keep them safely in their glass jars. :) 

What do you use your ribbons and trims for?

Messy work space

 

So, here it is. My messy workspace. I love having my own place in the house to keep my stuff in and just leave it untidy like that until I have time to return to whatever I was doing. I was just working on the Blackbirds tail feathers when the doorbell rang yesterday. Hopefully I'll be able to finish it later today. After I've done grocery shopping, a ton of washing and ironing and lots of other Saturday 'musts'.

Have you all noticed that I changed the name of this Blog? I've also changed my Flickr name. I feel a bit sad about leaving Polka Dot Bunny behind (guilty even), but I noticed that all the different names I was using was confusing for a lot of people so I chose to go with Follow the White Bunny.

Amsterdam

Today I traveled to a wet and windy Amsterdam with my dear friend Caroline. We were planning on doing some shopping for clothes in one of our favourite shops. We tried on lots of lovely dresses, skirts and cardigans. It was so hard to choose that it took us about 2 hours until we were happy with our choices. 

This cute dress is one of the items I bought. :) 

We also visited the Kitsch Kitchen shop were I found two lovely pieces of oilcloth (red w/white dots and a flower print) in the bargain bin and bought some kitschy but cute cards. We also found time to visit a lovely litlle shop which sold an enormous variety of ribbons, lace, trims and tassels (see the photos). Of course I couldn't leave that shop emptyhanded and bought 3 different woven ribbons with cute animals on. :)  Our last stop before hopping on the train again, was Waterstone's a bookstore where they solely sell English Books. 

On the photo above I was posing on one of the many bridges over the Amsterdam canals.

In the Octopus' Garden....

Is the new name of my Sea Creature Pattern! Thank you all for all your suggestions it was so much fun to read them all. I'm going to do this more often I think! Anyway, I'll be mailing the pattern to Tanya today. Congratulations!
For those who don't know : The Octopus' Garden is a song by the Beatles. The song itself is not that great (maybe it's just Ringo Starr's singing that is annoying me) but it has really sweet lyrics. It was also the name of the Kindergarten Assembly that my daughter did 3 years ago, she played a starfish. :) Thank you Tanya for suggesting this name!