Finished dress and Alice pattern news

I finished Luna's dress yesterday evening. I managed to sew the bias tape properly on and the dress was all done in no time. Sadly Luna refused to wear it this morning :/ So... we quickly move over to happy embroidery news!

After I had put my Alice in Wonderland Rabbit in the shop and my own version of the pattern on Flickr, several people asked me if I was going to make more Alice in Wonderland patterns. Well, I'm working on my second one now! It'll be a pattern of Alice and the Caterpillar. I would give you a sneak peek but it's too dark to take a proper photo now so that will have to wait. Speaking of Alice and sneak peeks...have you all seen the awesome trailer of Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland? I'm so looking forward to this movie. I love all Tim Burton films. This one features Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter and Stephen Fry will voice the Cheshire Cat. Can't wait! See the trailer here.

Summer dress WIP

I really wanted to start sewing again and preferably on a quick and easy project so yesterday I started on a summer dress for Luna from one of my Sew Hip! magazines I mentioned earlier this week. The pattern is by Oliver + S.

The pink fabric is a cute but rather hysterical Michael Miller print featuring Parisian cats. I bought over 3 yards (maybe even more) of this fabric on Ebay when I just started sewing because it was so crazy cheap. Same goes for the green gingham (which actually is meant to line curtains I think). I've made some really wonky trousers for Luna with the same fabric combo last year and she loved them so much I decided to use the same fabrics again.

The dress is super-easy to make and I'm now in the process of putting the bias tape on, which is the most tricky bit of the whole project. Somehow all my previous attempts at putting bias tape on stuff were not too succesful, especially the store-bought bias tape. I made this bias tape myself though, cutting diagonal strips from a large piece of fabric. It seams like a bit of a waste of fabric, but it feels so much better than the ready made bias tape!

Saffron!

This morning Saffron Craig and her husband Patrick visited us. As they are staying in Holland at the moment and were planning a visit to Rotterdam we got together for a cup of coffee (tea for Saffron) and a slightly overcooked Dutch Apple pie in my still quite empty kitchen. Saffron is very sweet and lovely and I loved getting together and talking about all kinds of stuff. I showed her and Patrick the house, including the really messy parts *blushes*. Of course I forgot to take pictures during our chat and apple pie eating session so we made this very spontaneous one after all that ; )

Saffron brought along some lovely samples of her fabric which I got to keep. :D Aren't they lovely? If you are not expecting a visit from Saffron soon you can also buy these gorgeous fabrics in her online shop.

Saffron, I'm wishing you and your family a lovely further stay in the Netherlands and the other European countries you'll be visiting and a safe trip home!

I blame Ikea...

Once this curtain was a two and half meter backdrop for some Ikea furniture, probably called Henrik or Palegg or something, in our local Ikea store in Norway. It ended up in the bargain bin and I took it home for very little money with the idea to make some cheap curtains for our former kitchen. Of course that never happened so the cheap backdrop moved with us to Rotterdam. And as I can't decide what I want for my current HUGE kitchen windows, it's an old house the kitchen is 3 meters high, I thought I'd make the Ikea curtain a little shorter and use it for one of the HUGE windows. What should have been a quick process lasted much too long and was accompanied by a lot of growling and angry looks from yours truly at the Ikea cheap curtain. Which didn't help. Anyway after I had finished I noticed something was not quite right (see photo) I blame Ikea of course...

I wanted to put this curtain up today because tomorrow I'm expecting a very special visitor. You may remember my Sunday stash post about lovely fabrics from down under, among them fabrics from Saffron Craig. Saffron is visiting Holland at the moment and after a few emails we decided to get together tomorrow morning. Needless to say I'm very much looking forward to that! :) Do check out her online shop!

White rabbit is finished!

Just finished my White Rabbit embroidery and I'm very happy with how it turned out! I think will turn it in to a little wall hanging or something. The pale yellow wood grain will look better with a darker border of green or blue than just on it's own I think.

If you also like Alice in Wonderland stuff you MUST check out The Mymbles Daughter, a fabulous jewelry shop on Etsy. I bought the sweetest necklace there with a separate bird and cage pendant. It was so hard to choose from the many lovely designs!

Sunday stash # 12 Sew Hip!

I love this magazine! Sew Hip! is a UK based new sewing magazine and it has lots of great patterns and ideas each month, especially on the beginning and intermediate level. I must confess I haven't made anything from this magazine yet. Maybe I should try and make the girls one (or two) of those easy summer dresses.... (preferably before the summer is over!)

It's good to be home!

Today we felt a bit like tourists in our own town. We went to visit the Euromast. A tall tower in Rotterdam which offers a magnificent view of the city.

Trying new stuff....

I'm thinking about expanding my 'business' and adding postcards and small prints to my shop. I'm using a few familiar images to try some things out. A Hedgie in a cup under a blood red sky doesn't quite cut it in my opinion...The Animal Alphabet is far from finished so that's a bit of a problem. Would people want to buy an 'ABN' (Anteater, Blackbird, Narwhal) postcard set instead of the more traditional 'ABC'? Probably not! ;)

If there any readers out there with a background in graphic design/art academy who would like to give me feedback or advice on the stuff I make contact me at followthewhitebunny@e-tropolis.nl!

White Rabbit WIP

Still working on my White Rabbit! The stitch on the jacket is clearly a long-short stitch, but I'm not sure what to call the stitch I used on the White Rabbit fur. I tried to make it look more furry, lively and textured by making stitches that go with the shape of the head, or the paw or the leg. I thought a normal long-short stitch would make Rabbit look very static and that's not good for a Rabbit in a hurry! :)

Winner! (and a runner up too)

Thank you all for your comments to my giveaway post! I loved reading your stories about your favourite patterns.

This afternoon Zoe and I did an official draw from a nice Scandinavian vase and she pulled out Isa's name! Congratulations! I felt like giving away a small runner up price too and a little bit later I let Luna draw a name from the vase too. Emmylizzy will receive my new Alice in Wonderland Rabbit Pattern. Congrats to you too. :)

Isa, could you please email me your address details on followthewhitebunny@e-tropolis.nl and Emmylizzy could you please send me your email address?

Every day is like sunday

This afternoon I came across some awesome Jip and Janneke shirts and I just had to buy one for Luna (and the checked skirt too, it was on sale). Jip and Janneke have been very famous and much loved Dutch childrens book characters since the fifties. The books, meant for 4 to 6 year olds, are written by Annie M.G. Schmidt. Some of her books are translated in English as well and they are really worth checking out. I especially like Minoes (Minnie in the English version) about a young lady who used to be a cat. I love the silhouette- like illustrations of the Jip and Janneke books by Fiep Westendorp too. The Morrissey fans out there probably know why I chose the shirt with this particular text on. :D

Sunday stash # 11 Mendocino

I'm a big fan of Heather Ross' fabric designs. It's a pity that the prices for some of her OOP fabrics on Ebay and Etsy are ridiculously high these days. Luckily her Mendocino fabrics are still affordable and just as lovely I think. These fabrics are amazingly soft and very suitable for making little girls dresses and such. I have been tempted to buy some of Heater Ross' Far far away fabrics as well, especially the green Unicorn, but I've been able to resist so far!

Don't forget to enter my little giveaway, just enter a comment in the post below!

Another Bunny Giveaway!

Comments closed, will draw a winner later today!
Yay it's Bunny Giveaway time again! It's smallish so I can post it to any place in the world (I think). It contains two vintage Aunt Martha patterns, one with rabbits and weekdays on, and one incomplete but still very lovely bird themed pattern also with weekdays. Both are cut so if you are a 'real' collector these might not interest you. On the other hand if you would love to use these you don't have to feel bad about cutting them up because somebody else already did that for you! :) I will add some of my favourite embroidery flosses and a fat quarter of the Dutch fabric in the background too.

If you'd like a chance to receive these goodies in your mailbox, please tell me what your favourite embroidery pattern ever is! Not including mine that is ;) Giveaway ends this wednesday at noon Amsterdam time.

Wearable embroidery

What is better than being able to combine the thing you love to do (embroidery) with something practical (wear the embroidery)? Next time I would rather embroider on a skirt or something I think, the t-shirt fabric was quite difficult to stitch on. That's why I look so worn out and tired on the photo probably. ;)

The birdie design is from the awesome pattern sheet Carson Ellis designed for Sublime Stitching. I'll blog some more about her artwork soon!

Alice and Martha in the Mail + giveaway coming up!

Today two lovely packets arrived in the mail!

On the left a lot of old embroidery transfers I bought on Ebay: a few Vogart patterns, including the gay fruits that I really wanted to add to my little collection and quite some Aunt Martha patterns including a cute bunny one that I could not resist for obvious reasons. :D

On the right a somewhat tired version of Alice in Wonderland with lovely illustrations by Margaret W. Tarrant. Luckily the inside of the book looks better than it's cover. I have been bidding on Ebay on books illustrated by Margaret Tarrant for quite a while now but I usually stopped bidding at about a third of the price of the final bid. Sadly there are people who buy these books to take them apart and sell the illustrations separately on Ebay.

Anyway, I will host a small giveaway on this blog soon! It will contain some of the vintage embroidery patterns as there were a few 'doubles' in the lot I bought and I'll add some embroideryfloss as well.

New Pattern is here!

Yay! I'm very content with my latest pattern of which I've already shown you several sneak peeks in the last couple of weeks! I hope you all like it too. I'm particularly fond of the Narwhal and the Lantern Fish. You can embroider the whole lot in one 'clever' design or embroider the creatures individually. Available in the shop now.

Summer Holiday Special in Follow the White Bunny shop!

I know you all like a good deal so this week only I've got a Summer holiday special in my shop! For every order of 9 usd or more you get to choose a free pattern worth 2.50 usd.

Craft room

Well 'room' is maybe not the best word to describe this area at the moment as it is still filled with unpacked boxes that don't belong there and you can only reach the desk by moving sideways. The furniture is a mixture of 'vintage' ikea painted in different non-matching shades of green over the years and the walls are still very grubby. I shall start using it from today on though and some of my drawing supplies are already on my desk. :) Hopefully I can show you a more inspiring 'After' photo of this room within the next year or so!

Sunday stash # 10 Craft books

These are most of my craft books, and a few books I sometimes flick through for inspiration for my drawings. I think I used the Bend the Rules Sewing book the most of this bunch. Can't wait for Amy Karol's new book!

Camelot

This morning I went with Zoe to the childrens book slash toystore in town and we came across this fantastic game which I had to bring home with me. It's called Camelot Jr and it's a big hit with both Luna (4) and Zoe (8)! The subtitle of the game is 'a romantic challenge' because you have to bring a knight and a princess together by making a path using 'stairs' and 'towers'. The levels of the 48 challenges range from simple to extremely difficult. I can't wait to try one of the more advanced levels myself but I'm afraid the girls won't let me so I have to wait until they are in bed. The girls also have a lot fun letting the knight and the princess, once reunited, kiss for an extremely long time with a lot of smacking slurpy noises. :D

Another Love Bird

As my proper drawing and art supplies are right at the bottom of a 3 meter high stack of boxes and my scanner hasn't been found yet there is no progress on my Pattern making activities. Maybe if I started unpacking boxes and stopped blogging (read: moaning) about all the things I can't find the problem would soon be solved. I did find the Art Deco Polar Bear and the Garlic press by the way. Anyway last night I started a little project to keep my hands busy. It's another awesome Sublime Stitching pattern (by Carson Ellis this time) which I transferred on an old T-shirt. The T-shirt had a stain so I was going to throw it out but I thought why not try to embroider it and make it The Most Awesome T-shirt Ever! It's quite difficult to embroider on this fabric (even with stabliser) so I only use a simple back stitch here. The banner says Love in Russian by the way. At least that's what Amy told me and I totally believe her of course! Check out her lovely version of this pattern!

Sunday stash #9 Floss Bouquet

No worries, this is not all of my floss, just my recently ordered skeins! :) As soon as I find my embroidery cards I will add them to the rest of the floss family. I invested in a lot of browns this time because I found I had a serious lack of those in my floss stash. I also need to buy another box because I'm afraid my current box cannot hold all of my floss with these 50 added.

Thanks for all your thoughts on my shop name, I think I will keep the shop name as it is for now. On Etsy it's easy to change your shop name, but you can't change your user name. I chose my Etsy name, Kloin, when I had no intentions of selling only buying so I didn't think about it too long. Kloin is my nickname from my teens, it's an anagram of Nicole in alternative spelling (Nikol). All the other names I use have at least a Bunny connection: Polka Dot Bunny (Flickr and Crafster), Chezbunny (in my Flickr photostream url) and Follow Bunny (Twitter). Why Bunny I hear your ask? My husbands last name has 'Bunny' or 'Rabbit' in it in Dutch.

Bunny's back!

Yay! Bunny's back, well I re-opened my Etsy shop anyway. I dreamed of a grand re-opening with loads of new patterns but that wasn't to be. Actually I still have about 100 boxes to unpack and one of them holds my scanner which is one of things I use in making embroidery patterns. Other things I still miss are my garlic press, my Art Deco Polar Bear figurine and my bedside reading lamp. Not that I use all those things when I make a pattern, but I just wanted to mention these. :)
I just managed to make a new wonky shopbanner in Picasa, have to make that more professional too soon. As a lot of people know me as Polka Dot Bunny is was considering changing the store name. What do you think?