Messy backside

Let me start by saying that I can do a pretty neat job on most of the basic embroidery stitches, but when it comes to fill stitching furs I go a bit crazy. On the left you see my not quite finished fox on the front and the right side of the picture shows what the back looks like. I go from here to there with my needle, making back stitches, skip pieces to fill in later  and adding different shades to give it that furry, lively look.

When I was fill stitching my furry friend the Jackalope a while ago, I wrote that it felt as if I was 'painting with thread'. Little did I know that Thread painting was an actual existing form of embroidery. Apparently you can do so by hand or machine. Thread painting by hand involves using the long-short stitch, which is excellent for shading of course, to give the embroidery a life like appearance. To be honest most of the examples of Thread painting, especially the animals, that I saw online were not really my cup of tea and I'm not sure extreme attention to detail automatically leads to a more realistic or 'lively' result either. Go google it and judge for yourself...

Not so unproductive after all... (or what I did last week)

 

My youngest daughter was home from school most of last week, filling the house with frightening cough noises and a lot of demands. Not a lot of time to do anything productive in terms of sewing and embroidery or embroidery pattern making for that matter. 

But.... in the beginning of the week I managed to do a little new Pindsvin drawing (upper left corner), I think it would make a cute postcard. Last sunday I presented my Valentine free-bee to the world and I was happy to see it already embroidered a couple of days later in the most adorable way. :) Oh and there was my Jackalope pattern on the Etsy front page which resulted in ehm...not much..but I was flattered nonetheless. 

Not pictured but nearly finished is my update for the Princess and the Pea pattern. I noticed that many people where looking for a kind of 'Stitch and Colour guide' to this pattern. Georgia, who stitched the original pattern for me, helped me out with the details on that one. Thank you so much, Georgia! And now I sit here on Friday evening with my Hoop up! swap embroidery project for John (a.ka. Quiltdad). Progress is slow because I'm fill stitching the fox with 7 different colours, making things up as I go along. 

Don't forget to check out my new blog  Wombats and Windmills. Georgia and I will start posting photos this monday! More bloggy news will follow next week :)

Lovely embroidered free-bee

Xperimtl made this lovely (and quick!) embroidery from my freebie Valentine pattern! You can download yours here.

Free Valentine Embroidery Pattern Bee Mine

This Free Follow the White Bunny Valentine Embroidery Pattern PDF is called Bee mine and can be downloaded here. If you'd like to share this pattern please do so by linking to this blogpost, not directly to the link provided. Thank you! I'd love to see your stitched little bees in the Follow the White Bunny Flickr Group or on the Follow the White Bunny Facebook Fanpage.

Sunday stash # 25 London & Apples in a Japanese way

As I was looking through my stash to find some fabrics for this weeks Sunday Stash,  I came across these two cotton/linen Japanese fabrics. I had not realised before they actually make quite a good match. :) I think I will use the London fabric to make either a tote bag or a fabric basket.

p.s. I will be posting a freebie Valentine Embroidery Pattern later this week...

Pink Leaf in some sort of Stitch

Today I was doing some stitching for one of my swap embroideries. Now lately I have been doing lots of Stem Stitches for my outlining (as you can see here) at least that's what I thought I was doing. But these might well be Outline Stitches. According to my  A-Z of Embroidery Stitches (which has a cover that hurts my eyes by the way, take... away.... the... neon.... pink!)  they are very similar except that with the Stem Stitch "(...)the thread is always kept below the needle, whereas in Outline Stitch it is kept above." Huh? It doesn't help that I'm left-handed and working from left to right (or is it upside down?) which makes it even more confusing, at least to me... Time to order Yvette Stanton's Left-Handed Embroider's Companion I think!

Craft Hope for Haiti Etsy shop

Many Etsy sellers have donated lovely items for the Craft Hope for Haiti Etsy Shop. All proceeds go to the  Doctors without Borders in Haiti. I just donated a super package full of Embroidery Pattern PDF's  (it's not listed yet) so if you had your eye on those already, you might as well buy it at the Craft Hope Etsy Shop. :)

p.s. I just bought this cute dress for Luna there!

Wombats and Windmills

On February 1st, Georgia and I will be starting a joined blog called 'Wombats and Windmills'. I think a lot of you may already know Georgia from her wonderful embroideries and equally impressive quilts and pincushions. About two years ago Georgia and I 'met' on Flickr and since then we have discovered we have a lot in common. We have never actually met each other in person because Georgia lives in Australia and I live in the Netherlands. On opposite sides of the world,  always in opposite times of the day in opposite seasons.

With this and this photoblog in mind, Georgia came up with the idea to do something similar. Mainly for ourselves to find out how different or similar our lives really are. So....we will (try to) post one photo each, three times a week according to a certain theme. This could be something ordinary (what's for breakfast), a favourite colour or a craft we're working on. Maybe you would like to take a peek every now and then to see what we are up to or just to say hi! You can find us here.

Sunday stash # 24 cozy folksy flannels

I love everything about these Folksy Flannels by Anna Maria Horner. They are soft (as you would except from flannel), the colours are pretty and I especially love the flannel with the house design. I can imagine these would make lovely snuggly (is that even a word?) quilt backings. PJ trousers would be great also.(and I think I have a pattern for that in Heather Ross' Weekend Sewing book too!)

Three twelve pounds of corn

As you all probably know there are lots of swaps in the crafty community. One of the swaps I'm participating in at the moment is the Hoop up! Stitch and Send swap over at Flickr. Do take a look at the photos posted there. How about this odd but awesome one for a Tim Burton themed swap? The actual embroidery bit has only just started but I'm sure there will be many more inspirational pieces shown in the pool soon. I'm stitching one now for the initiator of this whole swap, John Q. Adams, which some of you may know from his blog Quiltdad.

Anyway, while I was looking up the word 'swap' on the Wikipedia to find out the true meaning of the word, I came across this great  'Labor for Labor'  sample note. Three hours of carpenter work or (what I guess is) a quarter of a pound of corn. I have no idea how this would have worked in the 'real world'. Maybe something like (in a proud voice)"Here's a chair I made for you" (desperate answer)"But I need  three twelve pounds of corn to make bread!". I'm glad the terms of my Embroidery Swap are a bit more straightforward than that!

Yay for me, I'm in a magazine!

Well at least my Alphabet Tree pattern is in a magazine! Dutch magazine Flow (which happens to be a lovely magazine too, which you can tell from the cover on the right even though you shouldn't judge stuff by their cover I know...) put it in their monthly Internet Shopping Guide. With the wrong price and I would rather have had my new www.Followthewhitebunny.com link there but still I'm pretty excited about it. :)

The whole caboodle...(and some floss hopping)

Recently I bought a whole set of Anchor embroidery floss (150 skeins I think) on Ebay. I normally buy DMC floss but it was a bargain and true to my Dutch nature -we Dutch love bargains- I couldn't resist such a huge lot of floss! Anyway the whole lot arrived around Christmas and I had not looked at it until this afternoon.

To me it seems like the Anchor colours are generally brighter if you look at the whole range yet less shiny than the DMC flosses. Or is it just me? I just pulled these 4 skeins, admittingly not the best examples of the brightness of the lot, out of the huge heap of floss. I'm trying to decide on a colour for my little 'N is for Narwhal' embroidery. I'm also very curious about the Cosmo/Lecien embroidery flosses but I'm pretty sure I will not find a bargain on Ebay for those... What floss brand do you use? Are you a floss hopper or faithful to one brand?

25% off selected winter-y patterns!

Because me and mr Squirrel are freezing our tails off here at FTWB, I'm offering the Hibernating Bear, Hibernating Hedgehog and Follow me patterns with a 25% discount until this Sunday the 17th of January. This offer only stands for the individual patterns not the pattern package deals. Don't forget to mention 'BrrrWintersale' in comments to seller! Discount will be refunded to you via Paypal after your payment.

 

 

Fabric to look forward to this spring....

How about this pretty coral fabric? Cloud9Fabrics  is releasing their second collection  this spring. It's called 'Beyond the Sea' and like their previous gorgeous collection 'My Happy Garden' all fabrics are made with organic cotton. I'm currently using some of the 'My Happy Garden' fabrics in the quilt I was writing about last week and they are amazingly soft, with pretty subtle colours,  and stunning (simple) designs. Oh and perfect to work with too. Yes, I'm a big fan of Cloud9Fabrics. Check out the rest of the 'Beyond the Sea' collection here. I'm surely getting some of those fabric later this year!

Also organic and due to be released this spring is the 'Circa 50' collection by Monaluna for Birchfabrics. A set of fun retro designs with vibrant colours.

 

'Castle Peeps' is a fantastic line of fabrics designed by Lizzy House for Andover Fabrics and released this April. It is available in Gallant Green, Royal Blue, and Cardinal Red and perfect for kids' quilts! A free quilt pattern is already available here.

So are you looking forward to a particular line of fabric this year? Let me know!

A little bird told me...

...that this cute new Follow the White Bunny Pattern is in the shop now! As we still have cold and icy weather conditions over here this bird brings a bit of spring to our 'nest'. I've added 4 extra flowers to the pattern (the pdf pattern so not pictured here) so you can choose other flowers as well. :)

From scraps to squares...and from squares to triangles

Around Christmas time I started sorting through my 'leftovers' and scraps from projects I've done in the last two years. They were more or less sorted by colour in Ziplock bags and in the past weeks I've -almost frantically- been cutting squares from the scraps. These cutting sessions have been most therapeutic and I'm not done yet either. :) The sizes range from 2,5 inch to 5,5 inch. I've already sewn some of the smallest pink and green squares together to make a small bag similar to this one on the wonderful Pink Penguin blog. I had spotted the wonderful patchwork fabric basket tutorial there a while ago and I'm definitely going to make one this year.

I also started on a new quilt. Of course it's yet again a mixture of colours, designs and designers. There is some of that luscious My Happy garden fabric, some of Heather Ross' Mendocino, a touch of Saffron Craig's Dandelion Circles, an aqua Kei Honeycomb dot, some of Tula Pink's Hushabye duckies and Sandi Henderson's Farmers Market Paisley fabric. Originally I planned to simply sew lots of 6.5 inch squares together but somehow it didn't look right. So while I was reading the awesome Value Quilts Tutorial  (another tutorial I really really want to give a go this year!) I got the idea to make my squares into triangles and sew them together into these blocks. I'm quite pleased with the result so far. :)

Hello again!

Just a quick post to say hello to you all after my blog mini-break  Looking very much forward to a new year of blogging & crafting. :)  I've been thinking about my crafty resolutions (which I threatened to blog about a couple of weeks ago) but I have a hard time to decide on what these resolutions should be. I can think of many goals that I would like to achieve (Learn to crochet, Use lots of fabric stash then buy more fabric) but I'm not sure they are all very sensible...

I have hardly touched my camera for the last week or something (except to photograph a new design which I'll probably share later this week) but I think blog posts need pictures so you have to make do with one of the photos I took of the first embroidery I finished in 2010! I used the freebie pattern 'Pjotr in Paris' which I sent to newsletter subscribers last fall. It's the first embroidery of 7 I think for the "Hoop up, stitch and send"-swap over at Flickr. Anyway this inspired me to start on a new 'Pjotr' pattern but that will take a while to finish I think.