Preparing for the retreat

Only a couple of days to go before I'm off to the Fat Quarterly Sewing Retreat in London. I'm not fully prepared yet but I think I have most of the stuff I need for the classes sorted now!

In the background photo there are the strips I cut for the Wonky Log Cabin class. I had bought a Jelly Roll over three weeks ago for the occasion (because I'm a bit lazy) but sadly it hasn't arrived yet so I cut strips from a Moda Scrap Bag.  The Bag held scraps (end of bolt) from Kate Spain's new line Good Fortune. The fabrics are lovely but there were a lot of selvedges I had to cut off and most strips ended up no wider than 2.5" and often much thinner than that. Anyhoo....I added some Tula Pink and Mendocino strips too because I like to mix my fabrics. :)

The other photos (clockwise, start in the left hand corner) are: fabrics for my Paper Piecing class (I think the particular pillow I choose is called Snowball so I chose some Christmassy fabrics), some of my tools and stuff, and fabrics for the Frame Purse class and the English Paper Piecing class (I'm going to make the  Union Jack pillow).

In the next few days I will start packing my suitcase. I have only put an old cutting mat in it for now (the one I always use was way too big to bring) and I will be adding mostly comfortable and practical clothing to it. First I must find out what the weather will be like in London next weekend. Can't wait to meet all the others attending the Retreat.  If you see me (I look something like this) come and say hi! Me in a nutshell: I'm 41, mum of two, wife to one. And while sewing is not my greatest talent I do enjoy it a lot. You can recognise me by my Dutch accent. That is if I feel brave enough to open my mouth. :)

I'm also excited to meet up with Carina (my &Stitches colleague) who I will meet in person for the first time this Friday, a day before the retreat.

More shading

I'm still happily experimenting with shading in my Rabbit embroidery. I think I wrote earlier that I'm not looking to stitch very realistic stuff, I just want to add some subtlety to the fill stitching and colouring in my embroideries. And that takes time. Time to learn and time to execute. It's really worth it though and fun too. So the flower may not perfect but that's ok because I learned lots from stitching it. :)

After I stitched the (rather large) flower I washed out all the old blue markings and made new drawings directly on the fabric. I'm rather pleased with the flowery additions. The rabbit is now called Lucky by the way, after my previous blog post (which was mainly about how lucky I felt with the swap goodies I received). I thought it was a cute name for a rabbit. 

Lucky

For some reason whenever I do a swap I am always incredibly lucky with my swap partner! This time I got these gorgeous goodies from Moira (I think, had a hard time deciphering the card haha) for the Fat Quarterly Retreat Name Tag Swap.

In less then two weeks time I will be traveling to London and it's making me a little nervous already. At least people will know who I am by this wonderful name tag. The zippered pouch bag (I really must learn how to sew zippers, they still scare me) is fantastic too. I love the fabric she used for it! I will take it with me to London to keep some of my sewing supplies in like my rotary cutter, thread and scissors. Moira also sent me a lovely assortment of scraps and those are more than welcome too.

For the peeps who are following the progress of my white rabbit embroidery: progress is slow but I thought I'd post a photo anyway!

I am adding a wave/cloud shape in the background in teal/blue/white shades. I still need to un pick the flower in the front. To give you an idea of the scale: I'm using a 6 inch hoop and the rabbit is about 3 inches high.

Sunday Morning Quilts

Recently I bought this book called Sunday Morning Quilts (a nice comforting title isn't it?) written by Cheryl Arkinson  and Amanda Jean Nyberg. Primarily because it deals with scrap sorting and storage etc I thought I could use some guidance with that. ;)  And it did immediately inspire me to go through my stash and weed out anything significantly smaller than a fat quarter and dump it in my scrap baskets. I then sorted the scraps (varying in size from 2 inch squares to almost fat quarters) by colour because I couldn't wait to start my first project from the book! The book has the most wonderful quilts and deciding which one to try first was not easy. 

I finally decided on 'The Missing U' quilt. Right now it's obviously missing more than a 'u', it's missing at least another 11 blocks! Anyway the blocks are made by sewing slabs, which basically is sewing scraps together. And that is such a great concept! No need to match corners or exactly measure anything. Although you need to align the scraps or it' all end up as a very wonky block. All the details and tips on how to  do this are in the book of course. Besides the scrap sorting and the projects the book also has basic info how to make a quilt and reflections on (and examples of) what makes a modern quilt. If you are passionate about scraps and you love moderns quilts you can't go wrong with this book. My only regret is that I'm running out on scraps too fast now! 

Scrap vomit Square winners & return of the Jackalope

Just a random pic of 2.5 inch squares: these will most probably not be in the stacks I'm going to send!

There were more than three entries for my tiny giveaway (which was kind of a surprise to me!) so I had to perform some Random.org magic to pick the winners. 


The winners of the tiny charm packs which definitely will include ugly fabrics too are: Kris(ten), Amanda (yes those were commenters number 1 and 2!) and tubilinha carminha. Please send me an email with your full name and home address on followthewhitebunny [at] e-tropolis [dot] nl 

The winner of the Grand Small Prize, more 2.5 inch squares kindly donated by Katy, is Amanda! Congratulations to all!

For all of you who have been following my furry updates and want to do some furry stitching at a discount: I have 'un-retired' my Jackalope pattern for a short time. For the next three days it will be available here. As it's one of my earlier patterns the line drawing of the patterns is not as sophisticated as it is in my newer patterns (hence the lower price) but it's still a super cute pattern, perfect for having a go at embroidering furs! Please note that this pattern does not include and extensive stitch and colour guide. And if you are looking for tips on fur stitching I recommend my Forty Winks Fox pattern. :)  

Another furry update & inspiring stuff

I know some of you are enjoying seeing this embroidery develop step by step so here's another furry update! I must give these posts a better title than 'furry update' so if anyone has a good suggestion let me know. :) 

This is a practice piece for me. I'm trying out shading (and maybe later on some other techniques as well) and as I'm not stitching from a pattern or anything I add stuff as I go along. As you can see I use my water disappearing marker to draw directly onto the fabric. In the past few days I've added some flowers and started stitching some petals. I'm not looking to stitch as 'realistic' as possible and the flowers are more styled after flowers you would find printed on fabric for example than 'real' flowers. Not quite sure if I'm going to keep the petals though. 

Besides the flowers I started filling some of the background. The bunny itself isn't even finished but I'm experimenting and not working very methodically on this. Once I get an idea I feel the need to try it out immediately. I think the teal (three different shades so far) works well.  

Just the other day I stumbled upon the work of a Dutch artist called Chris Berens (not embroidery, I think he works with painted pieces of plastic or something) and found it very inspiring. A bit gloomy, surrealistic and in essence very Dutch as well. Check out his work here. I hope to bring some of that oddness/ other worldliness into my bunny portrait too. 

Many Quilts & smallest giveaway ever!

Here are (some of) my quilts in various stages of completion. In the back two lap quilts for my daughters (so that's at least one thing they don't *need* to quarrel about) both in an easy and quick 'cross' design. The bright quilt top on the left (for my oldest daughter) is finished, the forest coloured one is for my youngest and that is nearly finished too.

Spread out on the floor is my so called 'Winter Palette' quilt which I started uhm.. well last Winter. I started quilting it (so it's really nearly done!) in January I think, but wasn't sure about the loopy Free Motion Quilting I did on ca. 5% of the quilt. So I kind of abandoned it for a bit. Maybe I need to unpick the quilting and simply quilt it with straight lines...

In the back on the left is a Bento Box Quilt in progress. I made up the measurements of the strips etc as I went along. Naturally I forgot to write them down and now I first need to work out those details again before I can make more blocks. *sigh*

Next to it is the (in)famous Scrap Vomit Quilt! Quilt top is nearly done as well. Just need to sew some blocks and rows together but somehow progress on that is incredibly slow! More about the Scrap Vomit at the end of this post. :)

In front is a stack of Granny Square Quilt Blocks. Not in a real hurry to finish that one though...

Apparently I like making things with squares so I really need to try something new on a next quilt, because I can always add another project to the ones I'm already working on, right? ;) Actually these are not all the quilts in progress. I have a 'Disappearing 9 patch' quilt that has 'disappeared' right to the back of my fabric cupboard and my oldest half finished quilt has just turned three.

These are actually some of the nice squares from the basket!

Back to the Scrap Vomit Quilt...First take a look at some wonderful examples here. Currently I have a basket full of 2.5' squares left from my nearly finished First Scrap Vomit Quilt. Mainly because I downsized the first quilt and I keep on adding squares to the basket (for the Second Scrap Vomit Quilt I will make some day). But I want to share the magic of turning ugly (and pretty fabrics too) into a fabulous quilt and the best way is to 'sew for yourself'! So I thought I'd give away three 'Scrap Vomit Starter Packs' to readers of this blog. Each pack has 49 different fabric 2.5" squares, enough to make one block, and I promise there will be some truly horrible ones in the stack! I know this is a small giveaway, just some fun for the scrap loving quilters among you! If you can't wait to start your own Scrap Vomit Quilt then leave a comment on this post. If there are more than three comments (you never know!) then I will draw three winners. Comments close next Thursday the 10th of May, 12 AM Amsterdam time. Comments are closed now, thank you for leaving a comment. Winners will be announced later today.


Update: Katy has offered an extra lot of yummy Scrap Vomit 2.5" squares. Woohoo! These will be send to one of the three winners :) Thanks Katy!

P.S. these are all hand cut squares so while I always aim to cut them at exactly 2.5" some might be slightly bigger/smaller.
P.S. find the 'how to' for the Scrap Vomit quilt on Katy's blog.

Tag & Scraps

In less than a months time I will be attending the Fat Quarterly Sewing Retreat in London and I'm very much looking forward to it. And I'm a bit anxious too about going all by myself and not having actually met anyone else who will be there, even though  I 'know' people from Twitter and Blogland. :) Anyway, I will be attending classes about English Paper piecing, Wonky Log Cabin Block making and Frame Purses. I have absolutely no experience in either of these so I'm sure I will learn lots.

Earlier this year I signed up for a Name Tag Swap for the Retreat and after many hours spent on failed attempts I finally came up with the hooped tag you see pictured above. You may recognize it as a variation of the pattern I did for the Pretty in Patchwork Holidays book.  I still have to receive my name tag and I'm very curious what my (secret) swap partner came up with!

I have also been 'busy' sorting through my fabric stash this week and was amazed by the amount of scrap fabrics I had hidden in there. I have ordered this book, partly because it deals with scrap sorting and storage! I have been cutting some of the smaller scraps into 2.5' squares, planning to make another Scrap Vomit Quilt some day. I'm thinking of sending out some Scrap Vomit Starter Packages (with 49 different squares to make one block) if anyone is interested!?! I will write another post about that so if you're interested, keep your eyes peeled for that. :)

P.S. before I forget: I'm a bit late to the party but I'm also on Instagram these days. You can find me under the name Followbunny