Castle Peeps in Stitches!

I know that many of you love embroidery AND quilting so I'm extra excited to share this news with you all. Recently I started a collaboration with the very talented Lizzy House and the photo above is a little sneak peek of things to come. If you haven't seen Lizzy's new fabric line Castle Peeps please take a look at it here. The fabric should be available pretty soon (this month I think), quilt and embroidery patterns (yay!) will follow in a month or so. :)

Not following

I came across this photo recently and while I'm not a great photographer I do think it's quite special. I took this photo of my daughter Luna walking along the fjord near our house in Norway about 3 and half years ago. She was not even 2 years old here and very determinedly walking ahead of me towards the dark clouds.

There's a whale in the moon when it's clear...

...and a bird on the tide...

While I still spend many hours on the couch (thanks every one for the sweet well wishes and comments on my last post!) I pulled my Fish and Bird embroidery from my WIP basket. It's quite an experimental piece. And it still needs lots of fill stitches and obviously the bird needs a pair of legs as well!

I'm adding some darker shades now to the sea and sky to create a more 'dramatic' contrast because all the grey-ish and grey/green-ish tones made it look a bit bland. Also I don't want the whale to look 'furry' so I'm using subtle shade changes which will hopefully make it look a bit smoother.

The floss sorting is almost done (well the DMC anyway) and it turns out I actually don't have that big a stash of floss. I would really want to get my hands on some Cosmo/Lecien floss as well, it's supposed to be so good! I heard it's pretty expensive though but if anyone knows a good online source for it please let me know. :)

The week that was

Without going into specifics: last week was a less than glorious week for me. At the moment I'm recovering from surgery and on the mend (so no worries). I'm residing on the couch with my laptop, books (I'm reading Coraline and other stories by Neil Gaiman now and loving it!), my Nintendo DS and my Ipod. I'm also trying to catch up with my embroidery floss organisation. I have printed out lists with colour numbers and names from DMC and Anchor to help me with that. Any tips or comments on how you organise your floss stash are very welcome! As are comments to cheer me up a bit ;)

Thanks for all the sweet comments on my new pattern Forty Winks Fox.  It's one of my personal favourites among my own patterns thus far!

Follow the White Bunny proudly presents: Forty Winks Fox!

Finally, here it is: my new 10 (!) page PDF hand embroidery pattern Forty Winks Fox! The Forty Winks Fox pattern contains lots of details on colours, strands and stitches, on how to pick the right floss colours for your fox and a extensive 'how to' on embroidering animal furs 'a la Follow the White Bunny'. :) You can get your copy of this pattern in the Follow the White Bunny Shop as from today.

Many thanks to all who commented on the 'Name that Pattern' post! I had a hard time deciding on which name to use, after I read all the wonderful suggestions. In the end I decided to go for Rachel O'Donnel's Forty Winks Fox! Rachel, please send me your e-mail address and I will send you the pattern! I've decided to give away a second pattern to JennLynnJones. Not only had she made a rather long list of alliterating pattern names, her 'Found in the Foliage' was a close second, so JennLynn please send me your email address as well.

Name that Pattern!

As you can see it's not quite finished yet but surely it will not be more than a couple of hours of stitching before it is!  Looking at this photo, I think I chose rather odd interesting colours for the leafs. I'm pretty sure though that this pattern would look good with more conventionally coloured leafs too. ;)

So far I haven't come up with a name for this pattern yet and I thought  it might be fun if you all could post clever pattern names for this one in the comments. There are no big prizes to win, it's just for fun! But I will of course send this very pattern,  a multi paged pdf with a 'how to' on stitching furs, to the person who comes up with the name I like most. :)

Special offer on a special pattern!

I just read on The Long Thread that it's Children's Book Week. Apparently. I think over here Children's Book Week is usually held in Autumn but it really doesn't matter because it should always be Children's Book Week shouldn't it? I think it's important that children learn that reading books is fun. And even though I don't write books (maybe someday who knows?) I have made a pattern about reading that you may know as the Alphabet Tree pattern. It's now on offer till May 16th for the very special price of 3.75$ (instead of 5$)! Go get yours in the Follow the White Bunny Shoppe!

Just this afternoon I picked up a new book for myself in the bookshop. I would have almost bought it for the title alone. It's called  Plato and a Platypus walk into a bar: and it explains basic philosophical stuff through jokes. So far it's highly enjoyable!

Sunday Stash #30 Pinks & oranges

These are some of the pink and orange fabrics from my stash. Wouldn't they make a lovely combination for a girl's quilt?

Be prepared!

Surely you are all aware that Christmas is only seven and a half months away? ;)  So if you would like to start working on some handmade goods to give away now then you might want to take a look at these stitchable calendar panels from SeptemberHouse. Corinne from SeptemberHouse also has made a PDF booklet full of tips on how you could embellish your calendar. I've bought two calender panels but I have not decided on what to do with them yet.

Another recent Etsy purchase is this photo by Alli (you may know her of  her blog Onepearlbutton):

Alli started selling her photos (and cards) on Etsy  a little while ago and I love the vintage feel that her photos have. This photo actually makes me think of a smell from my youth. A flower-y smell from bushes or trees in summer near a local swimming pool. Funny how an image can evoke a memory of a smell!

I finished a fairly easy quilt top after a year! Yay!

I'm not quite sure why it took me a year to assemble this quilt top. It was such a slow process!  I do know that I started this with the idea to make it a quick and easy quilt a la Amy Karol's Lap Quilt in Bend the Rules Sewing. So I cut long strips of fabric. But Tanya Whelans Darla fabrics didn't look so good in long strips and I'm glad I changed my mind and cut the strips into squares! Georgia generously donated her red Darla fabrics to me because I hardly had any. And I added some other fabrics as well. All in all I cut so many squares of all these fabrics (and some others as well that didn't make it) that I could easily assemble another similar quilt top from all the 'leftovers', but that will probably take another year :)

Sunday stash #29 Colourful linen

These linen fat quarters are the latest addition to my fabric stash, aren't they lovely? I bought them in this Etsy store.  I plan to use these mainly for embroidery projects. :)