Follow the White Bunny

And the stitching goes on....

2012-01-26T16:41:00.001+01:00

From a crafty perspective the beginning of 2012 seems to be all about embroidery for me...I haven't been near the sewing machine the last couple of weeks. Maybe the ongoing bedroom/craft room make over is to blame? It's all a bit messy and dusty right now but once it's finished I will have a separate room with enough space for at least two tables (for my sewing machine and for drawing/cutting) and my fabric cabinet!

So for now it's mainly embroidery that I keep myself occupied with. Mr. T (Rex) above is part of a piece I'm making for an embroidery swap. I think it is turning out really and will show you the whole thing when my swap partner has received it. Even if it's slightly stressful it is great to make a piece outside your 'comfort zone' so I'd like to encourage everyone to take part in one of these embroidery swaps!

Oh and in case you missed it, I left the Feeling Stitchy blog (see my goodbye post here) and I was touched by all the kind comments here, there and everywhere. :) Incidentally my &Stitches partner in crime Carina also said au revoir. However we are planning some fun things for the &Stitches blog so please consider following us there. :)

Good times for a change

2012-01-21T20:08:00.000+01:00

For the past couple of days I've been working (quite fanatically I must add) on this cross stitch piece. There was a reason why I started it and a reason why I chose this particular quote (from a song by the Smiths, only this particular line was appropriate the rest of the song -however lovely- not so much...). ~~I will fill you in on the details in a couple of days time...~~ read more here.

The lettering was stitched with a lovely teal coloured floss that came from my untidy box with bargain Anchor flosses I bought on Ebay. For the birds and the line above the text I used DMC flosses, one is regular 6 stranded floss and the other is either a DMC colour variation or DMC variegated floss (I always forget which is which). I wanted to add something to the lettering that was traditional and chose the Danish Birds from a vintage cross stitch book. I didn't stick to the original red/blue colour scheme (the teal lettering was already stitched) and added a orange (with a lot of red) which I think works really well. Clearly it's not finished yet and because of some miscalculations regarding the size of Aida I needed I have lots of extra space to add stuff!

Wolfboy and a grumpy Bear

2012-01-15T14:04:00.001+01:00

Things got a little bit hectic after the launch of the &Stitches ezine last week. The attention for and response to our adventure has been great so far and we are very grateful for the support of course. Time to take a step back now and get on with the next issue! Today I'm jotting down some ideas for future issues, in this cute Wolfboy notebook. I bought it here.

Photo and artwork by Cate Anevski

Last Friday I wrote about an awesome piece by Cate Anevski on Feeling Stitchy. I just couldn't resist and had to add the original version of this grumpy fellow to my small Embroidery collection! You can stitch your own bear (and 6 other 'Animal Expressions') because there is a pattern set available (I actually purchased that as well). I named the Feeling Stitchy post 'Because Bears have Thoughts too' and I might just stitch those words to hang besides mr. Grumpy Bear...

&Stitches e-zine launch party!

2012-01-12T16:36:00.001+01:00

I'm so excited about the long awaited e-zine Carina and I have launched today! I could tell you all about it but then I would be repeating myself. So please go check out our launch party post here, for the oh so secret discount code (15% off Issue 1!) and a giveaway (2 day only so hurry) as well! Can't wait to hear what you all think of the e-zine. :)

The Cat's Paw

2012-01-08T16:03:00.000+01:00

Is there anything better than a white furry cat paw with pink toes? Tijger has been with us for about five months now and she is probably the weirdest cat we ever had. She likes to hang out in our damp shower cabin right after we have used it, sometimes for an hour or so. She is scared of vacuum cleaners but luckily for her we don't do a lot of vacuuming around here.;)

And luckily for us she is less of a hunter/attacker than before (but still does that from time to time). She does like to follow me around the house though, which is fine by me as long as she keeps those adorable white paws to herself!

Cozy

2012-01-03T23:39:00.001+01:00

We visited our 'Zoo-that-is-just-around-the-corner' yesterday and stumbled upon this tree-cozy. You could even do a bit of knitting yourself (with help of volunteers) surrounded by the Zoo's snakes and lizards (safely behind glass). I didn't though. I don't know how to knit and I might start to like it if I tried it. And I definitely don't need another hobby. Embroidery and a bit of sewing is quite enough at the moment. This year I'm going to try and do a bit more drawing as well.

This month I already have some nice crafty stuff planned: one is to finish this embroidery and the other is stitching a piece for my swap partner in the Phat Quarter Embroidery Swap! In my last Feeling Stitchy post I also pledged to 'stitch something neat on a doily' but I first need to find some vintage doilies to stitch on. Oh and there is of course the launch of the &Stitches e-zine too! What are your crafty plans for 2012?

What I did this Christmas...

2011-12-28T13:06:00.002+01:00

Besides family visits, playing board games and catching up with the 'Sherlock' tv series I also got a some cross stitching done. I bought the pattern at Radical Cross Stitch. Here's the whole thing (sorry about the terrible photo, it's dark all day!)

These e-patterns are really well designed and come with a lot of extra information. I also bought a pattern that says 'Embroidery tames my savage beast'. :) Not sure if I'll start on that right away or finish one of the many embroidery wip's in my basket first...

Under the Christmas Tree...

2011-12-24T15:18:00.000+01:00

Look who is hiding under the Christmas Tree...and she has found the one package that has her name on it too! I'm taking it easy for a couple of days, feeling a bit under the weather and doing a lot of cross stitching at the moment in 'my' corner of the couch. :) Merry Christmas everyone and/or Happy Hannukah. Hope to see you all back in 2012!

Perfect match

2011-12-19T16:14:00.000+01:00

Nearly done with this cute Penelope Waits pattern and I'm so very happy with the colour I chose for the lettering! It's a hand dyed variegated floss and the colour is called 'cedar'. (Click on the photo to see the different colours) Very fitting for a Bear/Woodland themed embroidery, right? Because the Bear is stitched in only one colour, I thought the variegated floss would add a little more interest to the embroidery. I bought the floss in this Etsy shop a couple of years ago. I don't see this particular colourway there anymore but there are lots of other pretty variegated flosses to check out.

Polar Bear Dreams...

2011-12-16T12:29:00.003+01:00

Look what I found when I was sorting my crafty supplies...my try-out version of the Polar Bear Dreams Ornament Pattern. Not perfect (as you can clearly see a gap between the head of the polar bear and his quilted blanket) but too sweet to chuck out. :) This Sleepy Polar Bear stars on the cover of the book that I promised I wouldn't mention again until Spring. If you really need to know you can find it in the sidebar on the right. ;)

I wonder if this Polar Bear is dreaming of launching a really great e-zine for Stitchers around the world? Oh wait...that's what I'm doing at the moment!

Carina and I are putting the final touches to a fun new publication we are releasing together as a dynamic (?) Dutch/Danish Duo in January! It's an ezine called &Stitches and it will be full of stitchy goodness: patterns, interviews with stitchers etc. Check our &Stitches blog for updates/sneak peeks in the next couple of weeks!

Besides my work on &Stitches there is still so much to do before Christmas! I have no Christmas tree yet and hardly any decorations up. Last year around this time we had lots of snow which makes it so much easier to get in the mood to put up Holiday decorations! I wonder how people in Australia (or any other place where it's summer right now) deal with that...

What every fabric stash needs...

2011-12-11T11:37:00.001+01:00

When I bought some goodies for my Secret Santa Swap partner I couldn't resist adding a little something for myself to the order. This is the outwitted colourway of Lizzy House's Outfoxed (I bought it here). I instantly fell for the sweet hedgehog print and the adorable foxes. When I just started buying fabrics, years ago now, I only bought the cute prints of a line of fabrics. I didn't really care much for coordinating fabrics of the same line that compliment the 'star' print of the line. Well that has changed. Every stash (and every line of fabrics) needs some good coordinating prints with their 'star' print and Lizzy does that so well! Love the leaf print and the geometrical design and the pearl bracelet print is a winner of course.

As I was about to send my Secret Santa Swap yesterday, my husband remarked that it might not be a good idea to send the cute flower bulbs that were in the package. Apparently there are regulations for importing plant related stuff. And I could have known as this happened to a small lavender pillow I once sent as part of a swap to Australia. So instead of the flower bulbs I have made a 'charmpack' with a few of my favourite prints that go really lovely together. At least I think so...

If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook you will probably have noticed that I'm very excited about the Fat Quarterly Community Sewing Retreat in London next year. I will be there on both days and I can't wait to meet many of my online sewing/quilting peeps. Check out the details here if you are interested in coming too!

Slightly Stressed Secret Santa

2011-12-06T12:04:00.001+01:00

Secret Santa Swaps. It's not something we usually do over here, but I signed up for the crafty Twitter Secret Santa Swap anyway. :) I always get a bit stressed about the swaps I do, mostly because I fear that whatever I make or send is not 'good enough'. And while the Secret Santa Swap hosts said that it was absolutely not necessary to include a handmade gift, I saw so many lovely handmade stuff pop up on Twitter and Flickr that I thought I'd at least make this fabric gift bag. The pattern is from *that* book that I'm in (I will not mention it anymore until it is in print, promise) and it so happens that I saw the pattern pop up on the Sew Mama Sew blog yesterday as a freebie!

Update: and with all the Swap talk in this post....look what arrived just after I finished my blog post!

Some awesome goodies from my Feeling Stitchy colleague Jo! We agreed on sending each other a book (from our personal 'library') but Jo added a lovely book bag, a hand stitched Christmas card and an Apple Crumble (!) Chocolate Bar! Thank you so much Jo!

My first stuffed toy pattern! (with matching pillowcase)

2011-12-01T10:18:00.001+01:00

This is my first stuffed toy pattern and I think he turned out rather sweet! What you can't see on the photo is that he's got an apple stuck to the quills on his back! :) You can find this little hedgehog (and the pillowcase too) in the Pretty in Patchwork book I wrote about a couple of weeks ago! It's available now as a download from Zinio (and not too expensive either!) but if you prefer a printed version of the book, you will have to wait till spring 2012.

At the moment I am working on quite another, but equally exciting, project, together with my Feeling Stitchy colleague Carina. No hedgies involved there but it will surely bring colour to the grey dull month of January for you! More about that later this month....

Pepernoten

2011-11-28T13:13:00.001+01:00

While most of you are probably in Christmas mode already, over here in the Netherlands we first got to deal with the feast of Sinterklaas. On the evening of the 5th of December Sinterklaas brings presents to the Dutch children (and some German and Belgian kids too) much like Santa does a few weeks later! In the weeks before the 5th of December children can put their shoe in front of the fireplace (or in our case: the not quite so romantic central heating radiator) and during the night Sinterklaas and his helpers fill the shoe with a small gift and typical Sinterklaas sweets and snacks.

The tiny cookies you see pictured above are called Pepernoten (literally 'Pepper nuts'), well actually they are not called Pepernoten but that is what most people call them anyway. I made lots of them yesterday with the kids and these crunchy 'nuts' have a nice sweet ginger/cinnamon taste. It's a great December snack! If you would like to bake them you could try this recipe. It's not the recipe I used (I buy my spices ready mixed) but I'm sure the result will be equally tasty!

SALE!

2011-11-24T12:06:00.001+01:00

I'm having a little Sale this weekend, it's the last one of the year! Use code BLACKBUNNYFRIDAY and receive 20% off all my patterns available in the shop (alas this does not include the Tweet Pillow pattern) Visit my Follow the White Bunny Shop (where you can download my patterns immediately after purchase, woohoo!) or my Etsy shop. Sale starts...now and ends November 27th 12.00 AM.

Beach in the Mist

2011-11-21T11:38:00.001+01:00

Yesterday we went for a walk on the beach, in the mist and it was wonderful! Too bad I can't insert the muffled sound of the waves rolling in towards the shore in this post. Or the calling of the Raven. I'm pretty certain it was looking for another Raven!

Tweet Pillow Pattern in the shop now!

2011-11-17T17:13:00.001+01:00

I'm very excited about this new Tweet Pillow pattern; it's an embroidery pattern and sewing pattern all in one! As you probably know this pillow is the result of my collaboration with the very awesome Thomas Knauer. Once the embroidery bit is done (colour and stitch instructions are included in the pattern) , the pillow can be quickly whipped up. The sweet fabric you see in the photo is Thomas' new line of fabric called Pear Tree.

You can purchase the Tweet Pillow Pattern in my shop (and in Thomas' shop too). Pear Tree fabric is available in quilt shops and fabric stores.

Bear & Vote

2011-11-16T08:59:00.001+01:00

I found this lovely Hardly Bear pattern by Penelope Waits (via Mrs. Lacer on Feeling Stitchy) a little while ago and just had to buy it. The text reads "You're so....I can hardly bear it". Not sure yet what I will fill in on the dots (awesome, cute, sweet, smelly?). As usual my cross stitching is a bit wonky. Or should I say 'dodgey' (yes that is spelled incorrectly) as someone called Anonymous kindly commented on my post about the Lazy Daisy Peacock Feather Stitch? ;)

Now onto the 'vote' part of this post. I have been rather busy the last few days with preparing the public vote for the Feeling Stitchy 'Covered in Stitches' Contest. It was incredibly difficult to choose from all the contest entries. If you have taken a look in the Contest Group in the last couple of weeks you will know that there were a lot of awesome pieces posted. I think (at least I hope) this contest inspired stitchers to do more than they thought they were capable of and I know that in turn their works will inspire other embroiderers too.

So...six Feeling Stitchy bloggers (including myself) made individual top 10's of our favourite entries, awarding points from 1 to 10. I think we ended up with a pretty awesome selection. Read all about it in my post on Feeling Stitchy here, and vote for your favourite embroidered book cover!

P.s. I even spotted one of the pieces from our top 10 on Etsy. It's an incredible bargain for such an amazing piece!

Piece, Stitch & Love part two

2011-11-11T13:57:00.000+01:00

I have some exciting news for you, at least I think it's exciting! I have contributed to a lovely new book called Pretty in Patchwork Holidays by the Big Friendly Quilting Giant John Adams. You can view one (or actually two) of my projects in the sneak peek here. And there's another project from me in the book as well (it's on the cover, can you guess which one it is?) I think the book will first be released as an e book (in time for this season if you are a real quick crafter) and next year in the printed version!

The first book in the Pretty in Patchwork series, by the very talented and lovely Cathy Gaubert, is about Doll Quilts. It actually only has been released a couple of weeks ago, just in time to put it on your Christmas wishlist! :)

Free Hedgehog Embroidery Pattern

2011-11-09T14:04:00.000+01:00

I promise, no more hedgehogs after this one. At least not for a bit....maybe...;) You can download this little guy from Bari J.'s We Love French Knots website. I was a featured stitcher there a couple of days ago and contributed this small pattern. I think I will try and stitch this hedgehog on some felt to make a Christmas Ornament!

Transferring an image onto felt is always a bit tricky. I usually draw free hand with a water soluble marker but if free hand drawing is not your thing you might want to try this tutorial by Futuregirl. Happy Stitching everyone!

Outsider looking in

2011-11-06T11:16:00.000+01:00

Usually when I make embroideries that are not based on existing patterns, like this Doubtful Guest embroidery there is a moment about halfway when I'm not sure whether it will turn out all that well. The project looks rather hopeless and at that point I simply need to persevere. I think I'm just past that point with this embroidery and I"m pretty confident that it'll be a rather nice piece when it's done...

Tomorrow is the last day of the Feeling Stitchy's Covered in Stitches contest and I'm blown away by the submissions so far. You can check them out in the Covered in Stitches Flickr Group. Clearly many talented embroiderers are also into books and reading! We will have a hard time choosing a winner.

Currently I'm reading Erin Morgenstern's Night Circus and I'd love to make an Embroidered Cover design for that book. It's a great read so far: magical and delightfully odd and I'm a bit sorry that I have nearly finished reading it! But maybe you have some great book recommendations for me? Do let me know your favourite reads!

He he it's a Crafty Spunky Sock Monkey!

2011-11-01T13:48:00.000+01:00

Detail of the Crafty Spunky Monkey Pattern

Many thanks to all the peeps who left a comment on the previous post! I'm calling this the Crafty Spunky Monkey pattern. So h3xkitten if you let me know your email address, I will send you a Crafty Spunky Monkey pattern!

Crafty Spunky Monkey is a PDF Hand Embroidery Pattern, perfect for beginning stitchers too. It comes with a stitch and colour guide and would make a great gift for crafty friends. I have included a banner in the pattern so you can add a quote or name of your choice. :) You can purchase the pattern here !

Monkey 2.0 (Name that Pattern)

2011-10-31T13:44:00.000+01:00

I made a new version of the Crafty Monkey, tweaked the pattern a bit et voila! Available as a pattern later this week. I'm going to personalise it and stitch some lettering on the banner. :) If anyone has a better name for the pattern than 'Monkey 2.0' let me know, there might just be a free Monkey pattern for the best entry!

2011-10-27T16:40:00.002+02:00

A little while ago I showed a little detail of this 'Tweet' embroidery and because Thomas posted about the pillow he made with it yesterday, I thought I would share it here as well. :) I sent it across the Big Pond, Monday a week ago and it took a little longer to arrive than I had expected but luckily just in time for Thomas to whip up a pillow and take it with him to Quilt Market in Houston, yay!

Photo taken from Thomas' blog!

Using the word 'Tweet' is especially appropriate because I 'met' Thomas on Twitter! Oh and because of the birdies in the Pear Tree fabrics of course...If you want to 'Tweet' me too, you can find and follow me on Twitter!

A PDF pattern (not sure if it will be an embroidery pattern or sewing/embroidery pattern) will be available soon. At least that is the plan. :) It's a fun pattern to embroider, I especially enjoyed embroidering the swirly bits and the brackets!

Cattitude

2011-10-25T13:51:00.000+02:00

"I'm so not going to sleep in the basket you bought for me"

Monkey business

2011-10-20T17:13:00.002+02:00

I thought I'd draw the little monkey I stitched for Katy before I send the embroidery off to her, just in case I want to make a pattern from it. ;)

In the mean time my youngest 'monkey' has been busy with some embroidery as well.

It is Fall Break over here (hence the not blogging for a week) and Luna wanted to start an embroidery. I often choose the smaller patterns from Sublime Stitching for the kids to stitch as they are not too hard and don't take forever to finish. This cute Maneki Neko is from the Sublime Stitching Craft Pad. Instead of the traditional white with black/reds accents Luna has chosen floss colours to match our own (Tabby) cat Tijger. :)

After teaching Luna the back stitch last year, I now taught her the split stitch. Luna embroiders with a 'real' needle, which may not be a great idea for all six year olds but she is doing brilliantly so far! Are your kids interested in learning how to embroider too?

Ask me, ask me, ask me...

2011-10-13T17:17:00.001+02:00

1. a is for ..., 2. S embroidery, 3. 038

After reading this pos t on Thomas's blog, I thought it would be fun to do some similar crowd-sourcing here as well! Ask me a question and I will try my best to weave the answer into my 'about me page'. It doesn't have to be craft or embroidery related, it can be anything (as long as it is ... you know...decent and not too personal, of course I reserve all right to ignore questions!). So ask me, ask me, ask me! From my favourite Scooby Doo Villain (which was the question I asked Thomas) to my least favourite subject in school, and from my preferred way of transport to which embroidery stitch I can't perform..Very curious what you all will come up with!

All lettering in the photo is from my beloved 'Stitched Lettering' group!

...in a Pear Tree

2011-10-11T16:40:00.001+02:00

So...here is a little sneak peek of something I'm embroidering to go with Thomas Knauer's adorable line of fabric called 'Pear Tree'.

One of the fabrics from Pear Tree

As we both love fonts, typography and all that, we had to sneak in some (well a bit more than 'some') lettering in this collaborative project. I have chosen some fairly textural stitches for the lettering and I'm particularly pleased with how the (split) stitching on the swirly bit turned out!

In the meantime I'm also working on another fun project which I know some of you will enjoy! Oh and I'm trying to feed the family too sometimes...So if progress on the pattern ideas I was working on (Badger, Owl Pillow) earlier is a little slow, bear with me. :)

Sweet Beetle Bug Free embroidery patterns and a new winner!

2011-10-05T09:24:00.000+02:00

You may remember I stitched a couple of cute little bugs a couple of months ago based on Saffron Craig's Beetle Bug fabrics. It has gone a bit quiet after that but finally we decided to make these available as a freebie embroidery pattern for you all! Woohoo! If you go here and sign up on Saffron's site you will receive an email with a link. The little bug is great for tea towels and napkins and the lantern bugs are lovely on a pillow case (in the pattern you will also find the lettering for the words 'Nite Nite Bugs'). Be sure to check out Saffron's other fabrics too. The softie panels make great quick and easy Christmas gifts for the little ones!

I'm also happy to announce that I found a winner for my Baby Go! Fabric Cutter. Lisab (comment no.4) is the winner. I have already contacted her and she is very pleased with her prize. Congratulations Lisa!

If you haven't already please take a look at the special offer for Follow the White Bunny Blog readers that Carina has for you: a 10% discount on her online Christmas Stitches Embroidery Class! Read all about it in the blog post below.

Ready for some...Christmas Stitching ?

2011-10-03T10:41:00.000+02:00

I can't believe it's October already! It has been crazy warm weather here the last week or so which is very unusual for this time of year. Still the calendar says it's only 85 days till Christmas! Therefore I thought you all might be interested in the 'Christmas Stitches' Embroidery Class my Feeling Stitchy colleague Carina (of Polka and Bloom) is offering.

The class starts on October 17th and runs for 4 weeks,ending on November 13th. In the weeks before the class starts, you willreceive a list of materials needed and a link to the class site. A Christmas stocking, ornaments, a brooch and various patterns will be among the projects included in the course. All in Carina's own wonderful unique Scandinavian inspired style.You can find more information and sign up for the class here. The great thing is that Follow the White Bunny readers get a special discount! Mention "Snowbunny" when youcheck out with Paypal to get a 10% refund. Valid until October 9th. That's pretty cool, right?

Stitch Inspiration

2011-09-28T20:17:00.000+02:00

Push Stitchery is my latest addition to my personal embroidery 'library'. It's different than other embroidery books; you will find no stitches explained in this book, reading Push Stitchery is more like visiting a really awesome Embroidery Exhibition. It features the work of 30 Stitch artists (selected by Jamie Chalmers aka Mr. XStitch) from across the globe (well to be honest more from the 'Western' part of the globe) whose work is 'pushing' boundaries rather than safely staying within them. Some artists distinguish themselves by using extraordinary techniques, sometimes on usual surfaces. Others have an unique (sometimes unsettling) theme in their work. A couple of artists I have 'followed' and admired the past few years are featured, like Porterness and Penny Nickels. Others, Aya Kakeda and Charlene Mullenfor example, were new to me but I'm glad I found them through this book! I wish I could show examples from the book but I can't due to copyright issues. If you check out the links you can get some idea of some of the content though. :)

And while I am by no means pushing any stitchy boundaries (except maybe my own) I'm rather pleased with how my cute tattoo/sewing inspired monkey is turning out! Only a few details to add and then I will send it off to Katy. I stitched the lettering three times (and unpicked it twice) and I found out that the stem stitch really is an excellent choice for stitching lettering similar to the one I used.

In other news: believe it or not but I still haven't found a winner for my Accuquilt Giveaway! So possibly there will be another draw later this week...

Winter Forest Quilt

2011-09-25T15:49:00.001+02:00

The pretty bird fabric in the middle (~~I think it is an Aunty Cookie fabric~~ It is a Shannon Lamden/Aunty Cookie fabric called 'Home Sweet Home' find it here in a black colourway) was given to me in a swap by my stitchy pal Georgia. It was one big panel that I just couldn't cut into! Until I saw the same fabric in this gorgeous quilt top made by Rita of Red Pepper Quilts. I also loved the subtle quite 'cool' colour palette she used. So for, what I call my Winter Forest Quilt, I chose colours (mostly from my stash, yay!) very similar to those in Rita's 'Milk and Cookies' quilt. And I cut into that big pretty panel because I'm sure I will enjoy the sweet birds with keys in trees much more in a quilt for my couch than hidden in my fabric cabinet!

Stitched Lettering

2011-09-20T20:04:00.001+02:00

1. Untitled, 2. DSC_0119, 3. Edward Gorey: The Bathing Machine, 4. How To Open A New Book, 5. L'Enfer complete, 6. Inspired by the lesser known novel from Natsume Soseki, "I, Swallow", 7. Yeah really, 8. soporific, 9. Ampersands framed

If you regularly read my posts on Feeling Stitchy -and why wouldn't you? ;) - you will probably have noticed that I LOVE embroidered and cross stitched lettering. From clever and witty quotes to beautifully stitched Ampersands. So if you are equally enchanted by Stitched Lettering come and join me in the Flickr Group I started earlier today! You can post (hand) stitched lettering, alphabets, ampersands, text, quotes, patterns of lettering, monograms etc etc you get the idea....There are already many wonderful photos posted in the group. I hope this new group will be a source of inspiration for you all!

P.s. click on the links underneath the photo to learn who the stitchers of these awesome pieces are!

My Snow Owl Pillow

2011-09-16T21:02:00.002+02:00

Today My Snow Owl Pillow is featured on the Fat Quarterly Blog ! The Shades of Grey Designer Challenge was a bit of a struggle (I wrote all about it on Fat Quarterly so I won't bother you all with an account of the difficult process) but in the end I was quite pleased with the result! Jan DiCintio's Shades of Grey fabrics are a joy to work with. The subtle greys go great with almost any other colour and the designs are slightly retro but modern at the same time. A perfect combination as far as I am concerned!

I tried to echo the retro feel in the embroidered O W L letters. On Pinterest I found a link to a great resource for cross stitched and embroidered lettering. You won't find these exact designs in there, but the book (it was from the early seventies I think) was a huge inspiration for the embroidered letters.

Can you tell these letters were embroidered under great pressure? ;)

I'm actually thinking of making this design (or something similar) into a pattern so every one can have their own Snow Owl Pillow!

Covered in Stitches: an Embroidery Contest!

2011-09-13T15:09:00.000+02:00

Today is the start of a wonderful contest over on the Feeling Stitchy blog and I am terribly excited about it! When I came across the awesome Jillian Tamaki Embroidered Book Cover Designs earlier this year, I thought it would be a neat idea to host an Embroidery Contest on Feeling Stitchy with the theme 'book covers'. As you probably know I love books and I had a great time a couple of months ago when I made my Doubtful Guest Embroidery for the Book themed swap I was involved in. So hopefully the theme will inspire many of you embroiderers out there as well. Besides that, there are some fabulous prizes to be won, kindly provided by small Embroidery supply businesses. I would like to enter and win them myself but of course I can't so I'm putting many of those items on my Christmas Wishlist. Like this one:

A Party Fox Crewel Kit by Takofibers. How wonderful is that?!

You can read all about the Contest here, and join the Covered in Stitches Flickr Group here. I hope to see many of you there! It would be lovely if you could help me spread the word about this Contest on your blog, twitter etc. My Feeling Stitchy colleague Carina made a lovely button for the Covered in Stitches Contest which you can put on your blog. You can find it right at the end of the Feeling Stitchy post about the contest!

A New Winner!!!

2011-09-12T20:00:00.000+02:00

I still have an Accuquilt Baby Go! Fabric Cutter to give away! I have tried my very best to find the person The Random generator first picked out of the hat but to no avail... ~~So the second number that it picked is no. 82: Charity. Charity said: "My favorite block, hmmmmmm , I think it would be log cabin. It is so versatile". Congratulations Charity!~~ update: believe it or not but no word from winner no 2 either, on to draw no.3!

I will be back tomorrow to tell you all about the contest I'm launching on Feeling Stitchy!

Challenge

2011-09-08T17:03:00.000+02:00

A little while ago I signed up for the Fat Quarterly Shades of Grey Designer's Challenge. I imagine there will be more of these challenges in the future and you don't have to be a 'real' designer to join in. So if you have the chance, sign up too. It's fun!

Jan DiCintio of Daisy Janie (organic) Fabrics sent each contestant (I think there are about 10 of us) a scrap bag full of scraps of her line Shades of Grey and some nice extra fabric to go with it. I instantly had an idea of what I wanted to make, changed my mind, changed it back again, then thought of something else and returned to something close to the original idea but better. It's half finished now and it certainly was a challenge. It still is a challenge actually because I have been waiting for something I bought on Ebay; an extra (but important) thing to add to the project. If it doesn't arrive in time I will have to think of something else..eeeep! Anyway... next week it will be up on the Fat Quarterly Blog and then I can show you all what I made with these lovely versatile fabrics.

Half a monkey and a Badger with a Skunk's tail...

2011-09-06T20:11:00.000+02:00

I'm making a little something for my friend Katy (of I'm a Ginger Monkey blog and Fat Quarterly fame). She has a new(ish) sewing studio and I offered to make an embroidery for her rather empty studio walls...a couple of months ago... Yes, I'm much too late with sending and it's still far from finished but I hope the cuteness of this Ginger Monkey with his Thimble hat makes up for the late arrival.

In the meantime I'm also still working on my Badger pattern. And with working on my pattern I actually mean I have been unpicking a lot of my Badger Embroidery. First I removed his tail. Somehow I had my badgers and skunks mixed up (I often draw from memory, without an example) when I made the initial pattern drawing and gave my Badger a Skunk's tail. It had to go obviously... After that I unpicked his coat (it didn't fit very well) and drew a new coat in a smaller size.

Oh before I forget... I have a 20% off all patterns Sale going on in both my Follow the White Bunny shop and my Etsy shop. It ends this Friday and you need to use the coupon code BUNNYSEPTEMBERSALE on check out to receive the discount.

Completely different things...

2011-09-01T21:57:00.000+02:00

Look who is making his appearance in one of Britain's coolest crafty magazines, Mollie Makes? It's my little Pindsvin! Thank you Justine for instantly making a photo for me of the feature as I don't have a copy of this months issue yet!

Now something completely different. Today I received this awesome swap package in the mail from Sarah-Jane

Sarah-Jane was a bit, ehm... late with sending so the arrival of these lovely goodies was totally unexpected but wow, what an amazing package it is! I think I will use the fabrics (of Sarah's sweet fabric line Children at Play ) to make a lovely lap quilt for Luna! And that magazine is right up my alley, I love making stuffed toys, something I absolutely need to do more often.

Again something completely different...if you love to embroider you need to keep an eye out for my posts on Feeling Stitchy. There will be an absolutely wonderful contest soon, with beautiful prizes that I think embroiderers will LOVE! So make sure you free your dairy of all appointments the next month or two to stitch your entry. The theme is one that is close to my heart and I hope that you will all find it inspiring as well!

Stacked Animals Quilt

2011-08-30T10:40:00.001+02:00

Sorry for the terrible picture, it's so dark outside it almost feels like autumn has already arrived! I'm fairly happy with how this baby quilt I made for my friend's baby, turned out. I loved working with 'boy' fabrics which was new to me. There is some Laurie Wisbrun Urban Circus and Saffron Craig's Beetlebugs in this quilt and even some Ikea Hippo's from my stash; as well as some Denyse Schmidt Katie Jump Rope fabrics. For the back I also used some Ikea kiddy fabrics from my stash.

I'm still not very good at quilting, but these narrow straight lines all around the border turned out quite good. I still have to do a little mending here and there; after it was washed and dried some of the fabric near the binding (on the top of the quilt) had come loose. No idea how that happened!

Only Happy When it Rains

2011-08-27T16:00:00.000+02:00

Remember the Walking the Globe Bear Pattern I made a little while ago? Well this is his furry companion 'Badger'. Badger carries around a dark cloud but luckily it produces Happy Rain. This pattern is inspired by the illustrations of Edward Gorey (I wrote about him several times here on this blog and on Feeling Stitchy) and the song 'Only Happy When it Rains' by Garbage (you can watch the video here if you like). Actually I'm pretty sure 'Only Happy When it Rains' will be a perfect name for this pattern. I'll try my best to finish it in the next two weeks or so. In the mean time I would love to hear your suggestions to give this Badger a name.

GO! Baby fabric cutter giveaway winner!

2011-08-27T10:27:00.001+02:00

I had a great time reading about your favourite quilt patterns and blocks in the comments of the GO! Baby giveaway. The Random Generator has spoken ~~and chose 63 as the~~ winning number, which is Roberta's comment. Roberta said: "Hi, I would love to receive a Go Baby, my favorite dies are: go hexagon-55011,go half square 4"-55031 and go tumbler 31/2"-55015. Thank you for the opportunity to win." Congratulations Roberta! Please contact me soon at followthewhitebunny AT e-tropolis DOT nl because I need more info from you! I hope you all have a great weekend, even if you didn't win!
~~New draw on Monday 12th of September!~~ Charity is the new winner!

Seriously...

2011-08-25T14:18:00.000+02:00

I call this obstruction of a Scrap Vomit Block Sewing Session. Rolling around on a couple of blocks is still o.k. It could mean 'Hey! I really like that you are continuing work on this Scrap Vomit quilt for the first time in two months'....

..but seriously: who can sew properly with a cat on their lap?! I can't! And I've got a very wonky Scrap Vomit block to proof it. Tijger has been with us for two weeks now. Most of the time she is really sweet but she is still a bit scared and 'defends' herself sometimes by biting. And when she is in a crazy mood she attacks our feet. Mmmmm...

I have some really nice shelves since last weekend in my little sewing corner by the way. I call them 'inspiration shelves' but they are really dumping grounds for bits and bobs, postcards, quilt rulers, drawings, patterns and prints waiting to be framed etc. My husband also put some 'pods' on the wall for my scissors and pencils. Both shelves and pods are from Ikea.

The 'interesting' black blob on the photo is part of a project I am working on for the Fat Quarterly Design Challenge which I promised not to show yet. I will write a little bit more about the challenge next week! (edit: just to be clear, the blob isn't part of the project, what's behind it is part of the project..)

Bits and bobs..

~~O.k.... now if you haven't already: please leave a comment on my Giveaway post! You don't have to follow me, you don't even have to like me, simply leave a comment to enter!~~ (edit: sorry, giveaway has ended!)

GO! Baby Fabric Cutter Giveaway

2011-08-22T19:43:00.000+02:00

Yesterday I wrote about my new tool the Go! Baby Fabric Cutter and today I'm giving one of these 'babies' away thanks to the nice and very generous folks over at Accuquilt! The incredibly lucky winner also gets to pick 3 dies to go with their Go! Baby Fabric Cutter. Check out the dies here, there is a huge selection you can choose from.

If you would like a chance to win this wonderful little helper (and of course you want to!) please leave a comment to this post and tell me what your favourite quilt pattern or block is. I'd love to discover new ones! This giveaway ends this Friday (August 26th) at 8 PM Amsterdam time. (edit: sorry giveaway is closed!) Winner will be announced the day after. Make sure to either check back in time or leave a 'trail' so I can contact you in case you win this fabulous prize. Good luck every one!

P.s. I you haven't already please check out the tutorial I posted yesterday for the wonderfully cute Tonka & the Stars pillow!

A new tool / Tonka & the Stars a Free Tutorial

2011-08-21T12:02:00.001+02:00

Surely you have seen the GO! Baby Fabric cutters make anappearance in the crafty blogosphere in a quite a few places recently. I must admit that I got pretty curious aboutit too, so when the people over at Accuquilt contacted me about trying outtheir nifty machine I just couldn’t resist! I’m a bit clumsy when it comes to neatly cuttingstuff for quilts and/or patchwork projects so the idea of creating lots ofneatly cut shapes almost effortlessly was tempting. I was also slightly worried, what if I didn’tlike it... or worse, what if I couldn’t figure out how to handle the GO! BabyFabric cutter? I needn’t have worried: I have been happily cutting squares,circles and strips since it arrived!

Go! Baby Fabric Cutter hiding in my fabric cabinet

When my Go! Baby Fabric Cutter was delivered I was surprisedat how small it was (there is also a bigger ‘Studio’ version available) andsurprisingly heavy for it’s size too! I guess it needs to be on the heavy sideto keep things stable while you are using it. GO! dies come in all shapes andsizes. There is a wide choice of appliqué designs for example and many ‘classic’quilt shapes like squares, triangles and tumblers. My first choice was the 2.5”strip cutter, primarily because I dislike cutting strips for binding ( I alwaysmake my strips for quilt bindings 2.5” wide). So last week when I need to make a (scrappy) binding I cut my stripswith the GO! Cutter and I produced my best binding ever in no time at all. I thought it would also come in handy (with theScrap Vomit Quilt in mind…) to make lots of 2.5” squares fairly quickly!

Go! Baby in action. Fabric is put on die, then put cutting mat on top and turn the handle!

The second die I chose was a ‘value pack’ with a2.5” square, two (2.5” wide) triangles and a 4.5” square. Because there is someloss of fabric cutting squares I think this particularly die is great to use upscraps. The brilliant thing about the triangle is the added seam allowancewhich makes it super easy to make perfect half squares triangles etc.

My third choice were the circle dies (2,3 and5”) I would have loved some other ‘difficult-to- cut-shape’ dies as well like atumbler or diamond but finally settled for the circles. You can cut several layers of fabric at thesame time (I used regular quilting cottons) apparently up to 6 layers but Ifound that about 3 layers for me was about right.

Tonka and the Stars Pillow Tutorial

After playing around with the squares and circles (I kept ‘feeding’my GO! Baby Fabric Cutter new scraps, it was kind of addictive) I came up withthis design: Tonka &amp;amp;amp; the Stars. It combines patchwork, appliqué and embroidery. It’s a quitesimple and quick project and we all love instant gratification toosometimes, right? My pillow cover is 12.25 by 12.25" (an odd size I admit but it worked for the pillow insert I had on hand) but the design is easily adaptable to make larger pillow covers by adding inches or even strips of fabric around the original design.

You will need

Scraps of blue fabric
Scraps of yellow/orange fabric
a 12. 75 by 7 “ piece of linen (cotton/linen blend)in a natural/oatmeal colour for the front. And a 10 by 12.75” and 8 by 12.75” piece for the back
Print of the Tonka (hedgehog) pattern. You can download it here.
Water erasable pen and ruler
Embroidery Floss and needle

Cut
I started with cutting 16 2.5 “ squares in different shadesof blue and a yellow one as well. For the top strip I cut a 2 by 12.75" piece of darkblue fabric. And for the back of the pillow I cut a 2.5 by 12.75“ strip of dark blue fabric. From the linen cut 5 2.5" squares and a 12.75 by 7" piece as well. These will form part of the skyabove your buildings. From the yellow/orange coloured scraps I cut threedifferent sized circles (5”, 3” and 2” diameter) to make a ‘moon’.

How squares and circles are arranged

Sew

Unless stated differently I used a 1/4 an inch seam allowance.

Arrange the blue squares in stacks of various heights toresemble buildings (or rather a silhouette outline of buildings).‘Top’ thelower buildings up with the linen squares.(see picture) Sew squares together and sewrows together. Set aside.

Arrange the three circles placing the smallest circle off centeron the medium sized circle. (see picture) Pin and stitch with a small zig zagall around (more than once if you’d like) Place your medium size circle on thelargest circle again placing it off center and stitch w zig zag. Take the 12.75 by 7 “ piece of linen and place the largestcircle (with the other circles now sewed on) on the right hand side (see picture, allow ca 1.5" from the top) Again sew on using a zig zag stitch.

Embroider

Use your water erasable pen and ruler to draw two lines fromthe top of one of the buildings to the moon. Make sure that the bottom of the ladder iswider than the top. I made the bottom ofthe ladder about 1" wide and the topabout 0.4” wide. Draw steps parallel to the ‘roof’ of yourbuilding and decrease the space between the steps slightly the closer you getto the moon. Stick your little Tonka the Hedgehogpattern on a window or put it on a lightbox and use the water erasable pen totransfer it your fabric near the top of the ladder you just drew. Or, alternatively, draw the hedgehog freehand. Read more about transferring embroidery patterns here.

For most of the embroidered bits I used all 6 strands of embroidery floss. I used a chunky looking stem stitch for the sides of theladder in green (since there were green accents in the ‘moon’ andin the ‘buildings’) and a back stitch in a slightly darkershade of green for the steps. Tonka the hedgehog was outlined in a back stitch with in a medium brown shade. The black quills were embroidered in a quite random stitch, much like a seed stitch. Arms andlegs were stitched in black using a back stitch. For the eyes and the tiny nose I used 2 strands of floss and a tiny satin stitch! Add some stars in yellow here and there by making a...Star Stitch!

Cut and Sew a bit more

Are you still with me? Nearly done, we just have to put the parts together now. Trim the patchwork panel by cutting 0.8" off from the sides and bottom. Sew it to the linen 'moon' panel and press. I made a simple 'envelope' style back and used a folded strip on the outer back panel to coordinate with the front of the pillow. Finish the other back panel by folding over the long (12.75") side first by a 1/4 of an inch and again by 1/2 inch and sew the hem.

To make the back lay the back panel (with the strip) onto the front panel (right sides together) and put the hemmed back panel on top of that. Pin all around and sew all panels together. Turn inside out and you are done!

Now I hope you have enjoyed the product review and the Tonka tutorial. Please let me know if something doesn't add up (which could easily be the case with my math skills) and if you decide to make your own Tonka the Hedgehog pillow please post a photo in the Follow the White Bunny Flickr group or on my Facebook Page!

If you want to you can subscribe to the Accuquilt mailing list and get lots of free patterns, you can do so by simply clicking this button

Happy Stitchy everyone!

Edit: don't forget to have a peek at the post above, you can enter my giveaway to win a Go! Fabric Cutter all for your self! Yay!

Coming to you soon...

2011-08-16T16:20:00.000+02:00

Here is a little sneak peek of a free sewing/embroidery tutorial you can expect later this week on my blog! Today was the first day of school after the summer holidays so I could really make some progress. At least so I thought...I actually did lots of unpicking and re-sewing but in the end the whole project looked 100% better so the extra time spent was totally worth it!

Tijger

2011-08-12T15:35:00.001+02:00

Meet Tijger (Tiger)! Yesterday we took her home from the animal shelter where she had been for a month or so. I haven't been able to make a proper photo of her yet, she moves around a lot! She seems to love sitting in one of the window sills though or like here: on top of the couch near the window. Apparently the project I'm working on (tutorial on the blog soon!) already has the all important kitty approval. :)

What I didn't do while I was away

2011-08-10T18:57:00.003+02:00

Mmmm... I'm afraid this photo shows most of the crafting I did while I was away. Not a lot is it? On the photo you see attempt number 1 and attempt number 3 at one of the lovely What Delilah Did cross stitch patterns I took with me. I really liked the idea of using black aida but it didn't look that great in combination with the white floss. After two tries (using more strands on the second try) I gave up on the black aida and moved on to a tiny scrap of cream aida I had in my craft bag. But I wasn't too happy with how that turned out either. My poor cross stitch skills and lack of experience (I only ever finished one cross stitch pattern) made me doubt everything about this project (let me emphasize that it's certainly NOT the lovely pattern that was to blame!). I was especially in doubt how many strands to use. So last week I asked peeps on Twitter and Facebook about how many threads I should use on 16 count aida and I also asked Sophie (who runs What Delilah Did) about it. Two threads seems to be the way to go but Sophie let me know she uses 4 strands to stitch her own patterns. I guess in the end it depends on the pattern you are stitching, your personal preference and the floss that you are using. Anyway Sophie wrote that she had just completed a 'how to' which covers all the basic info you need to know when you start cross stitching. Do check it our here, and don't forget to visit her store while you are there. :)

The other craft related thing I did in Wales was visiting a real fabric store. Now that may not sound too exciting for most of you but over here there aren't too many fabric and/or quilting shops. Especially ones that sell modern fabrics So actually being able to touch and really see the fabrics before I buy was a novelty for me. The selection of fabrics was fairly limited (a lot of Amy Butler, Anna Maria Horner, Kaffe Fassett and some Michael Miller fabrics) but I couldn't resist to buy something and I chose this lovely Paula Prass fabric, a pretty blue/green plain fabric and an Amy Butler 'Gum Drop Pillow' pattern. The staff were very friendly and besides fabrics they also carried a wide selection of trims, tassels, buttons and beads etc. So if you ever visit Hay-on-Wye you may want to stop by Bedecked, Castle Street 5.

p.s. tomorrow we are welcoming a new furry friend to our house (yay!) so I will probably be back on the blog tomorrow to share some pics!

Out and About

2011-08-06T11:22:00.001+02:00

Yesterday we returned from Wales where we had a wonderful time: fairly good weather, good food and we made lots of fun trips to castles, museums and other local attractions. The cottage we had rented was great as well. It was clean, well stocked and it had lots and lots of quilts!

On our visit to Bletchley Park (which is nowhere near Wales but we stopped by on our way to Wales) I saw this wonderfully cute 'Playtime Drapery Store' which I guess is from the 1930's. I also stumbled upon a Manbroiderer avant-la-lettre.

This is one of the bedrooms in the cottage we had rented. Every bedroom had matching bed quilts and quilted wall hangings! Later this week I will write a bit more about some crafty stuff I did (and mostly didn't) in the last couple of weeks but I had to sneak in this next 'me and my owl' photo in this post!

We absolutely loved the Owl Centre in Kington (Herefordshire). They had so many different examples of British (and other) owls. There were lots of other animals too like goats and alpacas. The best thing (for me) was that you were allowed to say hello to a few of the most friendly owls in the centre! (or a 'nose to beak experience' as the centre calls it)

Say hello, wave goodbye

2011-07-20T12:55:00.001+02:00

...but it's not 'farewell'! I'll be back in a couple of weeks time (probably sooner than I planned to, knowing myself...) Hope you will still be here when I return because I will have some REALLY good stuff coming up in late summer and early fall! I will close my Etsy shop for a bit as well, but the good news is that in the mean time you can still buy my patterns at the Follow the White Bunny Shop !

New addition to Embroidery Wall & more Organic Embroidery

2011-07-15T21:17:00.000+02:00

Wynken, Blynken and Nod have been added to the small embroidery collection in my living room. My own Alice Rabbit had to temporarily find another place to stay to give the sailing trio some room. Lisa sent this awesome embroidery to me as part of the Phat Quarter Embroidery Swap. (The swap that I made the Edward Gorey embroidery for) The theme was books and Wynken, Blynken & Nod is a poem but with such a wonderful piece in the mail I won't complain about the tiny bit of rule-bending Lisa did here ;)

Detail from Lisa's embroidery. Photo taken from Lisa's Flickr photostream

Lisa also kindly sent me a book with not only the actual poem but also the illustrations by Sheilah Beckett on which she based her piece.

Check for more photos and details the post on Feeling Stitchy I wrote about it and Lisa has many more gorgeous detailed photos of her embroidery on Flickr.

Because of the girls' summer vacation there is not a lot of time (or energy) for exciting new craft projects. Luna and I did make some progress on the little dolls quilt we are making together for her toy horse. She did a wonderful job with stitch-in-the-ditch-quilting! And I made a tiny bit of progress on the Organic Embroidery.

Colonial Knots were added all around the outside of the yellow bit. I made a feeble attempt at trying to learn the Colonial Knot early in my embroidery 'career' but soon gave up. With the Embroidery Companion (the Yvette Stanton book for left-handers that I always keep near) in my lap I tried again and still found it very tricky to master this stitch. I felt like two hands weren't enough to make one miserable Colonial Knot! Next I added a circular Fly Stitch. I needed a little guidance to make it more or less round, hence the blue marks on the fabric. I actually quite like the Fly Stitch but don't use it very often.

While I was organising some stuff in my house I came across a lot of forgotten embroideries in progress. I'm so easily tempted to start a new project but really should finish at least some of these. One is pretty special, I started it over 2 years ago and I bet some of you will be surprised I have not finished it!

Organic Embroidery

2011-07-10T11:41:00.000+02:00

As you may know I regularly post on the Feeling Stitchy blog. My focus is mainly on 'amazing stitches' although I also post about any embroidered piece I come across and like. Last Friday I posted about an especially interesting embroidery by Valerie Roybal. (read the post here) I thought the organic shapes, or indeed the organic 'free style' in which her embroidery seems to have been made, were very inspiring. My little try out doesn't look anything like Valerie's piece. Not nearly as organic and more flowery. More fiddly too...but I did find out how lovely (almost liberating!) it is to stitch without a pattern! So if you feel like doing some 'Organic Embroidery' too, I'd be interested in seeing your embroideries! If you tag your photos #organicembroidery when you post them in the Embroidery group on Flickr I'll be able to find them more easily!

p.s. this Organic Embroidery made me think about Organic Embroidery Floss. A whole different subject altogether which I will address on another occasion!

Stacked coins and embroidery trivia

2011-07-07T22:24:00.000+02:00

I'm rather pleased with how this baby quilt top turned out. The colours and the fabrics work well together and the coins are neatly stacked (well neat enough anyway). I'm a bit worried about the quilting bit though. Not brave enough to do the whole quilt with a nifty free motion pattern yet (although I have been practising!) so I am just quilting straight lines vertically about 1/4 of an inch on either side of the 'coins'. I'm not continuing the vertical quilting lines on the sashes though, not sure what I will do with those (suggestions are welcome!).

In other news.. I went to see 'Water for Elephants' yesterday. Loved the book and I enjoyed the movie too. It's about a circus during the Depression and it tells a beautiful love story too. Anyway in one of the scenes Reese Witherspoon, who plays one of the main characters in the movie, was embroidering. And it looked pretty convincing too. Not that you could see what she was embroidering but still.... So I googled a bit and found out Reese actually collects embroideries in real life. How cool is that? :D

Walking the Globe...New Pattern is here!

2011-07-04T23:11:00.000+02:00

Woohoo! I'm not sure how I did it, but I managed to get my new pattern in the shop just now. I had a hard time deciding on a title for this pattern. "What makes the world turn?" or "Up in the air" were options but in the end I settled for "Walking the Globe". Today I found out that that is how you call balancing/walking on those big Circus Balls. Anyway if you feeling like stitching this sweet pattern yourself you can find the pattern here.

Something for the couch

2011-07-04T11:25:00.000+02:00

Yesterday I made a new cushion cover for one of the couch cushions and I think it turned out fairly well. I'm not brilliant at making cushion covers as you can probably tell from the photo. I always make them slightly too big so my cushions always suffer from 'empty corners syndrome'. I also don't measure anything. Because I often think cushion covers just made from regular quilting fabrics are a bit floppy I quilted the top of this one. It now feels firmer but soft at the same time. The cushion is also a try out for a colour scheme I had in mind for a quilt later this year (or maybe even next year?) It's a mix of newer fabrics and stash fabrics in grey, black/white and red shades.

P.S. Many thanks to all the sweet replies to my last post!

on Plagiarism and what makes the world turn...

2011-06-30T19:57:00.001+02:00

While I was sorting my crafty area (well not really, I was just looking at all the stuff I have) I came across a set of vintage game and flash cards I bought on Etsy a year (or maybe two?) ago. From the collection of Flash cards (meant to teach the meaning of 'difficult' words) I chose Plagiarism. And some cards that went with that theme. Oh and Scooby Doo, just to lighten the serious mood a bit. ;)

Plagiarism is pretending that stuff someone else has made or has written (or elements of it) is your own work and it's not an ok thing to do (and it's not the ultimate form of flattery either). Since I have been in the online crafty and blog scene (a couple of years now) I encountered too many examples of plagiarism: (embroidery) patterns, tutorials, art, style.

This issue bothers me especially because I've noticed that I don't feel like I can share everything about my creative process on my blog anymore. Frankly I'm a bit scared someone will run off with the idea before I have even finished it! But maybe I'm giving myself too much credit in the 'steal worthy department' and designs can also be copied after you have released a pattern. So I'm going to be brave and show you my latest not-yet-released design. I'm in doubt whether to release it as a single pattern or as part of a set. If I do release it as a single pattern (most likely) it will be available sometime in the next two weeks or something.

I bet you didn't know the world was turned by an acrobatic Circus Bear? He still has to work on his juggling skills though. ;)

Alphabet Glue Winners!

2011-06-26T22:14:00.000+02:00

One of the fun projects from this summer's issue of Alphabet Glue

The Random Number Generator has spoken and chose Jenn, Paloma and Rescued Goods as winners of the Alphabet Glue giveaway. Congratulations! Jenn, could you please send me an email followthewhitebunny [at] e-tropolis [dot] nl so I can send you your copy. I think I have found email addresses of the other two winners. Enjoy your prize everyone and thank you Annie for making this giveaway possible.

Alphabet Glue Giveaway & Interview !

2011-06-22T21:38:00.002+02:00

My friend Annie Riechmann (can you call someone you have never actually met a friend? I think sometimes you can!) has just released the second volume of her wonderful e-zine Alphabet Glue 'for kids and their grown ups'. Alphabet Glue is packed with fun book, story and reading and writing related activities.

This Summer edition features many perfect projects and reading suggestions to keep yourself and your kids busy during the Summer Holidays. Volume two also highlights the genre of Kid Detectives. Besides a Super Sleuth Reading List the magazine shows how to make your own Detective Kit! How much fun is that?

I'm giving away three Alphabet Glue e-zines (see end of this post) but first let's get to know the woman behind Alphabet Glue a bit better!

Tell us a little bit about yourself...

I am a semi-professional multi-tasker living in Vermont. We moved here about two years ago from the San Francisco area for my husband to go to medical school. I have a seven year old daughter, a wonderfully fluffy but dangerously insane cat and am a special education and literacy teacher. I sew a little, write a lot, vacuum obsessively and read non-fiction almost exclusively. Also, I can bake a pretty good cupcake.

What inspired you to make a e-zine about, or rather ‘around’, the theme of children’s books ?

Around the time that my daughter was born, I was teaching at a school in California where I met a couple of really amazing third grade teachers who had excellent taste in books. I felt like I was constantly being introduced (and re-introduced) to kids' books that were so full of wonderful characters, illustrations and stories that I couldn't wait to share them with my daughter. Since that time, books have become a big part of life around our house as well as a consistent theme on my blog. I feel like there are so many great books out there for kids, but it sometimes takes a little guidance and time to be able to find them among all the less than stellar stuff that gets published. I wanted to help with that process while also sharing my own enthusiasm for the magic of shared reading experiences for families.

How was the response to the first volume of Alphabet Glue?

It was really, really wonderful. I couldn't believe the outpouring of support for the magazine and the idea behind it. I got some very sweet emails from people telling me how much they loved it, and that was so nice to hear. I've also been really happy to see how many families that had gotten the first issue have downloaded the second one right away. It makes me feel like I'm doing something worthwhile and that people can really incorporate into their family routines.

What is your happiest reading or book memory from your youth?

I think that I read a Nancy Drew book a day for much of my second grade year. I remember being completely absorbed and just having the best time reading them. I also remember going on a long car trip when I was about seven, and my dad bought me a hardback copy of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory that I read along the way. I still have that book and my husband recently read it to our daughter. She loved it too.

Do you have aspirations to write your own children’s book?

You know, not really! I'm pretty satisfied doing a lot of writing about other people's books.

*** Thank you Annie, it was fun getting to know you a little bit better! ***

Annie generously offers three copies of Alphabet Glue Volume 2 to readers of this blog! ~~Leave a comment for a chance to win and let me know what your favourite children's book detective is!~~ I'd love to know! Personally I'm rather smitten with the books about the Mysterious Benedict Society. Fun, modern detective books for older kids and adults too. At least I enjoy reading them! ~~I will close the comments Sunday at noon (Amsterdam time).~~ If you want to purchase Alphabet Glue right away you can do so here. Comments are closed winners will be announced later today!

One last important thing to share at the end of a lengthy post: I have a sale going on in my new shop (not the Etsy shop) If you use the code SUMMERBUNNYSALE on check out you will receive 20% off all patterns! So leave a comment and head over there quickly. The sale ends this Saturday!

Nite Bugs & a book delivery

2011-06-17T13:31:00.000+02:00

I just had to have this book by Edward Gorey after I made the embroidery based on the cover illustration of the Doubtful Guest. It's just a small book but very much worth checking out if you haven't read or seen it yet. The story and the illustrations are very touching. I assume it's a kids book but I'm sure some adults (like me) can relate to this odd creature as well. And if not then you can just admire the drawings. I'm going to do another embroidery from this book for myself. :) I may use my very special Cosmo Floss for that! I ordered it at Hip Fabric. It feels amazingly soft and I can't wait to try it out!

As I'm not really all that mobile yet I have done some stitching and stuff while lying on the couch for the second Beetle Bug Design. Here's a little sneak peek:

The Nite-nite Bugs are embroidered on a pillowcase (how appropriate!). Still one of my favourite things to embroider on!

Half a Happy Baby Quilt

2011-06-14T15:06:00.000+02:00

So the lucky (?) recipient of this Baby Quilt in Progress is not born yet but I thought I'd start early to allow myself some time to do a good job with this one. Obviously (see last post) there is no progress at the moment so this is what progress I made last week.

I started without a real plan, I only bought 4 fat quarters of Laurie Wishbrun's Urban Circus (and ended up only using 3 of them) and a bright orange Kona Solid. In the end I decided on doing a stacked coins quilt and pulled fabrics from my stash that went well with the Urban Circus colours.

I was glad to be able to use the Ikea Hippo fabric in this quilt. I once made curtains for Luna with that fabric and still have A LOT of it left! I will probably use some hippos for the backing as well. ;) Then there are some fabrics to soften to brightness, like the grey and white dot and the blue 'quilters linen' (love that fabric). I added some cute Saffron Craig Beetle Bugs in the mix as well. No idea where that Star fabric came from! And because I was missing some darker/medium blue tones I had to throw in some of my precious Denyse Schmidt Katie Jump Rope as well. The orange solid as sashing was a bit too bright so luckily I had some white Kona solid hiding in my stash too. I'm pretty chuffed with the result so far! :)

Recovering under badly made quilts

2011-06-12T12:19:00.000+02:00

I'm still here, but taking it really easy while I recover from some surgery. With books, puzzles, music and my Nintendo to keep me company. And my laptop of course. And the Bunny family who are taking good care of me. I even got out some embroidery work today ....

I'm residing on the couch under two badly made quilts. The one in the picture above isn't too bad, I 'only' messed up at the quilting bit there. The other one (not pictured for obvious reasons) really needs to be replaced soon, it's uhm...not the best quilt I made. It's simply....fugly.

Speaking of quilts, due to much excitement on Twitter and Flickr about the Quilt Along based on the Farmer's wife Quilt Sampler book I decided to order this book. I don't think I will be actually quilting along with the peeps on Flickr (111 blocks are a bit much right now) but maybe someday I can make a non-fugly quilt for the couch with some of the blocks from that book.

Shop announcement

2011-06-09T08:58:00.000+02:00

Just a short post to let you know that my Etsy shop will be closed for the next day or two but don't be sad (and if you do feel sad: feel free to take a paper hankie from this cute French box) because you can still buy my patterns at www.Followthewhitebunny.com !

The Doubtful Guest

2011-06-07T21:51:00.002+02:00

I had so much fun stitching this piece for Lauren for this (last) months Phat Quarter Swap. The theme was books and Lauren had listed Ed Gorey in her 'like' list. I hadn't heard of him so I did some googling to find out more about him. I haven't had the chance to read any of his books yet but he sure is an amazing illustrator! I based my embroidery on one of his illustrations from the book 'The Doubtful Guest'. Working with a limited colour palette was definitely very inspiring. The original is black and white and I added a little (blue) splash of colour. The fabric ('Heath' by Alexander Henry) was perfect to stitch on as well. I ordered it in several colourways so you probably will be seeing more of my embroideries stitched on this fabric.

The cross hatch has a retro feel to it which suited this Embroidery particularly well, I think. The fringe on his scarf is 'real'. I used the Turkey Stitch to create it. :) By the way, Lauren is an amazing stitcher, check out her wonderful Duvet Cover Project here.

Earlier tonight I came across this rather disturbing news posted by Jenny Hart on her blog. Apparently two of her pieces were stolen after an exhibition in Canada. Unbelievable! Well they are pretty awesome but surely no one has the right to steal them. Check out the details on her blog, obviously Jenny wants them back!

Some progress on the Tiny Circus Rabbit

2011-06-05T13:29:00.000+02:00

After finishing my Phat Quarter swap embroidery piece (which I will share with you once my partner has received it) I thought I'd do a little more work on the Tiny Circus Rabbit. Tiny because the whole embroidery fits in a 3 inch hoop. I'm quite pleased with how the sky and clouds turned out. I'm using lots of colours from my box with odd Anchor floss colours. They are perfect for this embroidery. I tried to scan the embroidery because somehow photos don't do the embroidery justice. And neither do scanned images of it actually. In real life it looks far more subtle and smooth!

I'm also working on the second Beetle Bug design and Saffron and I are hoping to have the Beetle Bug patterns available for you in a couple of weeks time. Read Saffron's account of our cooperation here! Saffron also has an awesome new fabric line called Imaginary Flowers.

Best envelope ever!

2011-06-03T11:54:00.000+02:00

This morning I received a print I ordered from Helen Dardik's shop. I have such a soft spot for her art. And how adorable is this envelope? I love it when artists take the time to make your order extra special! Find her shop here (temporarily closed so be sure to check back later) and her blog here. Happy weekend everyone!

The good, the bad and the flag waving animals

2011-06-01T19:25:00.000+02:00

Eventually this quilt will be 7 by 7 blocks and I have finished 20 blocks so far, so that's almost half the quilt! Yay! I actually stood on a ladder to make this photo. I haven't got a design wall, so I use the floor in my bedroom as a horizontal design wall ;)

This is just a small example of the squares I received in the last couple of weeks. I did a couple of swaps for this quilt and it is so much fun! (I will write a bit about my fellow scrap vomiteers and scrap swappers at a later point) There were lots and lots of lovely fabrics (the good) and some (the minority, I'm glad to say) were a bit scary. Like these international flag waving animals in the middle which I received from Claire. For the UK peeps, find her fabric and haberdashery store here no flag waving animals here just good stuff! Strangely enough even the most awkward fabrics (brown with gold accents, 80's retro coffee themed, flag waving animals) can blend in. So if you are also planning to make a scrap vomit quilt, try to get as many different fabrics as you can: the good, the bad and the flag waving animals.

And the Alice Rabbit Pattern goes to...

2011-05-29T13:17:00.000+02:00

Thanks to all the lovely stitchers who entered my mini-giveaway! There were 19 entries here and 1 on Facebook (because some people can't comment on blogs due to problems with Blogger), I decided to award an extra pattern to Ligia (who commented on Facebook) because she added a whole song to her comment (this tactic only works once peeps...) The other 19 were thrown into the hat called Random.org and surprisingly it chose entry number 1, Alejandra, as winner! Please contact me both at followthewhitebunny [at] e-tropolis dot nl so I can send the Rabbit your way!

Update Alice White Rabbit Pattern & weekend giveaway!

2011-05-27T15:34:00.002+02:00

I have updated my PDF embroidery pattern of the White Rabbit (from Alice in Wonderland) a bit. I cleaned up the original, and added a little intro and a reversed version of the original to the pattern. It's a sweet little pattern and perfect to try out your fill stitching skills! I'm giving one of these patterns away this weekend to one of the followers of this blog. So please make sure you are truly a Bunny Follower! ~~Giveaway ends this Sunday at noon (Amsterdam time) so be quick!~~ comments are closed, winner will be announced later today. You can also buy the pattern here...and if you win the giveaway I will refund the money. :)

p.s. I know that, since last week, people who use blogger/blogspot etc. can have trouble with posting comments, if that is the case please leave a comment on my Facebook page instead on the giveaway post only. One comment per blog follower please! Good luck everyone!

update: the 'google friend'/follow option is somewhere on the right hand side of this page!

Happy mail & a peek of a new project

2011-05-23T19:40:00.000+02:00

Just when I needed something to lift my spirits this arrived in the mail from my Danish embroidery friend Carina! How sweet is this needle book? I can store plenty of needles in it and it has a neat little pocket to put some floss in as well. :) I know (and this is not why she send me one trust me!) that Carina sells these in her shop too. Thank you Carina!

So...here's a little something I've been working on in the past week. I've been 'playing' with Saffron Craig's 'Beetle Bugs' fabrics, trying to translate them into embroidery. I kept the design very close to Saffron's original designs for this line of fabric. Not sure where this will lead but I'm very pleased with this 'Bouncy Bug' design. Even my husband commented on it! (in a good way....)

Wouldn't this be cute embroidered on a boy's pillow case? Or on a book bag? Let me know what you think!

Sunday Stash #39 Boy fabrics

2011-05-22T15:04:00.002+02:00

This is fabric I bought to make a baby quilt for a friend of mine. She really likes orange and modern and hip prints and colours so I assume she will like these! Since I (sort of) still try to not buy too many fabrics I only bought some fat quarters of cute Laurie Wisbrun Urban Circus fabrics and a yard of Lizzy House's Castle Peeps fabric for the border. Maybe I will add one or two coordinating solids and hopefully there are some fabrics hiding in my stash that will coordinate with these fun fabrics!

Floss Revolution

2011-05-21T17:30:00.001+02:00

Yesterday I realised that I really needed to buy some new floss soon because my floss boxes were beginning to look very empty... The thing is that I don't like buying new floss very much because I don't know what flosses I have, what I need and what I want to complete the DMC collection (I mean: who wouldn't want to own all of DMC's six stranded flosses? I know I do!). Also, I'm not a person who makes lists and I'm not great at keeping track of my stuff.

My floss is (sort of) sorted by colour. Or rather was sorted by colour because I did something drastic today! Floss Revolution! I took out all of the bobbins and put them in order of DMC number. Crazy, I know...because it is widely known that the DMC numbers ~~seem~~ are kind of random sometimes. So putting them in order by their number doesn't not result in a very organised looking box, colourwise. You might find a grey shade, next to a brown one, and a green floss next to that. But I do know now how many different colours of DMC floss I have (168 and with the ones I ordered yesterday about 200), what I don't have (200+) and which ones I have several times. Apparently I really like 166 and 3766. :)

And from now on I'll probably use my Great Book of Flosses to choose colours for my embroidery work and I will be able to find them easily in my newly organised floss box!

If you want to learn a bit about the history of DMC floss, read this great post on the Mr.X Stitch blog.

P.S. I'm not being sponsored by DMC or anything (wish I was!), it's just the floss I used most (but not exclusively I have some Anchor too)

I wonder why...

2011-05-19T12:41:00.000+02:00

I was looking through some of my older photos on Flickr and came across this sketch I made a couple of years ago. I wonder why I pictured the Moose from this angle though...*giggles* It was right at the start of my Follow the White Bunny adventure and I had just decided to choose the 'Follow the White Bunny' name in favour of 'Polka Dot Bunny'.

New Sailing Polar Bear Pattern!

2011-05-18T11:51:00.000+02:00

My new pattern is here and I'm so excited about it! As with all my newer patterns it has a colour and stitch guide( but I'm sure you all will do a great job at doing your 'own thing' with this pattern) and you can buy your own downloadable copy here for only $3.75! I also have adjusted (slightly lowered!) the prices on some of my other patterns in my new shop so you might want to check those out too! Hope to 'see' you there soon. :) Prices in my Etsy shop will be adjusted later this week.

Another way to transfer an embroidery pattern...print and iron on

2011-05-15T10:56:00.001+02:00

For the Embroidery Commons project (I wrote about it here) I needed to transfer some text to fabric. My assigned line is "In the same way". And because the term the Mr. X Stitch family (of which I am temporarily part of for this project, like a distant Dutch cousin) is stitching, is 'Fractal', I thought it would be fun to embroider the same line four times. I'm not that knowledgeable when it comes to Fractals but I do know they tend to repeat themselves a bit. Mr. Bunny got the idea to add another layer of clever by using a simple pattern within the pattern by moving the colour forward one place with each subsequent line.

I thought I'd try to transfer the text to fabric by simply ironing on the text I printed on my laser printer. And I was not disappointed. Sure it's a bit vague but good enough for me to embroider the letters. I ironed it on right after printing and I'm not sure if it will transfer all that well if you wait a bit longer. Before printing the sheet I reversed the text in an image editing program so the text would appear in the right way on the fabric. I tend to use different transfer methods for different type of patterns and I think this way of transferring works well for simple patterns and/or patterns with bold lines. And if you like vague fuzzy lines...;)

Update: this may not work with every printer but it's worth a try, right?

Old Hen

2011-05-12T20:42:00.000+02:00

The photo is unrelated to what I actually wanted to write in this post but like many other bloggers I don't like to write posts without a photo so there you go.. I stitched this Hen when I did some embroideries for Lizzy House last year (to go with her Castle Peeps line of fabric) but the Hen didn't make it into the patterns! Lizzy now has a fabulous follow up line by the way, it's called 1001 Peeps.

So...what I wanted to let you know that due to personal circumstances my Etsy shop will be closed for the next couple of days but....The NEW Follow the White Bunny Shop is open for business as usual! There is a pretty awesome package deal in there now of three bestselling patterns with well over 20 pages of patterns, photos and stitch & colour guides.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Small embroidery, long story & a very large quilt

2011-05-08T13:22:00.000+02:00

This is a small embroidery I'm working on. I think it will be a perfect 'boys' pattern! With each pattern I make, even small ones like these, there at least a few sources of inspiration. What makes a pattern unique in my opinion is how you translate your inspiration into something that is truly your own.

The boat in this pattern is from a sketch I made of a vintage illustration of a Chinese boat, I think it even was a Pirate ship! I love embroideries with text or lettering in them so I decided to include a little sentence I made up in this embroidery as well. One of my friends is expecting a baby in July so when I inquired after colours and themes for a baby quilt the colour orange and the Polar bear came up. The mauve bit on the boat, which I admit is an odd touch, was inspired by the colours of a dress I was wearing last week. And I thought the little patch of fabric on the sail was just a nice thing to add. So...there you go: small embroidery, long story...

And before I move on to my progress report of the Scrap Vomit Quilt I want to share the two pieces of art I received this morning from Zoe and Luna. Even though the Unicorn does look a bit like he is about to do a very large pee I thought it was a lovely drawing.

And I'm impressed by the use of colour in this painting!

The Scrap Vomit Quilt is coming a long nicely. I so enjoy working on it and I'm eagerly awaiting the arrival of new squares from my quilt-y online friends! It will be 7 by 7 blocks and on the photo (it's the big one, the other is half a lap quilt) you can see the full width laid out on the floor.

Hope you all have a pleasant day today and if you have the time, do hop over to Carina's Craft blog. She has some wonderful giveaways (including one for a voucher for my shoppe) on her blog right now.

&...because it's fun

2011-05-03T21:04:00.001+02:00

I promised there would be a new pattern from me soon but there isn't one yet and I would like to explain why. Not sure what happened but sometime, earlier this spring I lost my embroidery mojo a tiny bit. Only a tiny bit... On top of that I also felt slightly pressurized to release a new pattern. Seeing that others make one pattern after another and my last pattern was months ago! I guess the final straw, was what happened to me a couple of weeks ago (I kind of wrote about it here) which took away any fun that was left in being creative. So considering all this it was not strange that the pattern I was working on (not the one pictured!), was not coming along smoothly. I'm sure many of you would think it is lovely as it is but I don't want to put anything out there that I'm not 100% (or at least 95%) happy with....

So I put the pattern aside, even though I had been working on it for weeks, and it felt like a big relief! I sorted out my floss, went through my WIP's, dug up this small Ampersand embroidery and finished it! I also went through some older sketches I had made for patterns and found some nice new candidates for (smaller) patterns. After all that my embroidery mojo was back and I'm stitching away on a new pattern idea. Besides that, I also signed up for two fun embroidery projects.

One is the Phat Quarter Swap, I just had to play along this time because the theme of the swap is books! I also know from previous embroidery swaps that it's great for your creativity, even if you are simply following an existing pattern. The other project, Embroidered Digital Commons, is a bit high brow, which is probably why I don't understand half of it, haha. Several groups are stitching terms from the Digital Commons. I'm in Mr. X. Stitch's group and we are stitching the term 'Fractal'. I was designated to stitch the words 'In the same way'. I think I can do that!

Another thing that felt really good was opening my own shop (see previous post) with downloadable patterns. Hopefully I will be able to put something new in there soon (but I'm not promising anything!)...

New place to buy my patterns!

2011-05-01T21:02:00.002+02:00

I was thinking about opening my 'own shop' for a while now and I quite spontaneously decided to make the switch today! My Etsy shop is still open (and most likely will remain open for some time) but for your future purchases please visit my new shop! The best thing about the new shop is that you can download the pattern you have purchased right away. Also, you don't have to sign up or anything although payments will still be made via Paypal. Hope to 'see' you soon in my new shop. :)

Minty green sewing machine

2011-04-30T14:55:00.000+02:00

I must admit I was very tempted to buy this vintage Minty Green Husqvarna Sewing Machine. Isn't it beautiful? I bet it weighs a ton though and where am I going to put another sewing machine? But still... so lovely shiny and elegant and green!

Today is Koninginnedag (Queensday) in the Netherlands, a national holiday. Traditionally people try to sell each other junk from their attics on that day. The sewing machine was one of the nicer items I saw. In the end the only thing that came home with us were four books (only 1 euro for the set!) for Luna to read. She is just starting to read and of course we want to encourage her as much as possible!

Sun, Swans & squares

2011-04-26T16:04:00.001+02:00

We have been enjoying some wonderful sunny days here during the Easter weekend. Today we visited a small local amusement park and of course the kids wanted to do some water biking in these huge white Swans. Does water biking even exist in other countries? Sounds like a very Dutch thing to me...

I have also been busy cutting even more squares for my Scrap Vomit Quilt. There is even a Scrap Vomit Appreciation Society on Flickr administrated by yours truly, Katy (she started it all) and Thomas. Thomas is making a large non-repeat Scrap Vomit Quilt. This means that he needs well over 2000 different 2.5" squares to make his quilt. So if you think you can contribute to that by sending him some squares, hop over to his blog for the details!

I have also been embroidering and I hope my next post will feature my new pattern! Woohoo! So it's time for me to stop chattering and start stitching everyone :)

Onedaysaleonlycouponcode!

2011-04-21T11:01:00.001+02:00

Don't be too late for my Onedaysaleonly! If you use the coupon code BUNNYONEDAYSALE on check out you will receive a 24% discount on ALL PATTERNS! Woot! Find the shop here.

In the mean time I'm trying to get the new pattern finished, I'm still pondering about which details to include and what stitches to use. Can't wait to share this one with you all though. :)

Many thanks to all the sweet peeps who commented on my last post or sent virtual hugs via Twitter etc. I appreciate it a lot! I wish everyone a sunny or otherwise pleasant Easter and I will 'see' you all back after the weekend!

You got to put your behind in your past

2011-04-19T20:42:00.000+02:00

Two days ago I was planning on writing something about this photo, it was going to be a happy post actually. Because I love sewing squares together, I also love how my sewing and piecing skills improve with each block I make. And what I love most of all is the kindness and generosity of many of my sewing and quilt friends from all over the world.

Alas.. the crafty world is not all rainbows and unicorns and happiness etc as I experienced with my little embroidery business a couple of days ago. I have been in doubt whether to address the issue here on my blog. Part of me really wants to but at this moment I think it's better to leave the negativity behind me and move on. I always like to quote Pumbaa from the Lion King in situations like this. 'You got to put your behind in your past'. So that's what I'm trying to do! (but it's not easy)

Spring bunny

2011-04-15T09:37:00.000+02:00

The best thing about making patterns is when you see them stitched, preferably by others, and turned into beautiful embroideries. I think Lisa's version of my Spring Bunny Pattern is absolutely adorable! As you all probably know I'm a big fan of fill and fur stitching and this bunny has it all. I have different plans for my bunny though. He's already transferred to a pillowcase and I'm thinking of embroidering him in one single colour. :) Having said that, I have many projects on the go right now, so I'm not sure if my Spring Bunny will actually be finished this spring!

Tiny Stitches on a Mini Sewing Machine

2011-04-11T09:50:00.001+02:00

This weekend Luna finally received her own little sewing machine, a Janome mini! Because we had lots of family over to celebrate our birthdays on Saturday we had to wait until Sunday to actually try it out. I set up a little table and chair right next to my own sewing table. In the green basket Luna has her own 'stash' and her own fabric scissors. I had planned on continuing work on the patchwork doll's quilt we were making but Luna decided she wanted to make a bag for her doll.

So we made a bag! (probably hardly visible on the photo) A bit fiddly as a first project because it is so small, but at least she got to practice sewing straight lines. The Janome Mini is a very basic and light machine but it's perfect for kids who want to learn how to sew. It has ten stitches, all of them varieties (different lengths) of the straight stitch and the zig zag stitch. It's actually recommended from age 8 and up but since Luna only gets to use it when I'm around and she is very precise in everything she does I think it's fine for her to use it.

Scrappy Goodness

2011-04-09T10:20:00.000+02:00

I think I mentioned Katy's Techinicolour Yawn Quilt once or twice on this blog, although I usually refer to it as the Scrap Vomit Quilt (Katy's own words). There is something incredibly satisfying about sewing 49 random fabric squares together. This is Block A. Block B has a diamond pattern of solids. I traded and was kindly donated scraps so in this block alone there are 18 fabrics that I received from other people, isn't that great? Also, I try to combine not so exciting scraps with a few of my all time favourite prints.

This is Katy's wonderful Technicolour Yawn Quilt. Clearly I need to find someone to quilt it for me if I decide to make it as large as this one!

In other news: my friend Annie has a fun giveaway on her blog right now. She is celebrating her 500th blog post and there are lovely Bird and Little Bird items to be won (like the Semi-Fantastic Mr. Fox pattern) and some of my stuff too (Castle Peeps Pattern and voucher)! So hop over and say hi!

Free Spring Embroidery Pattern

2011-04-02T21:11:00.001+02:00

Last year I posted a freebie pattern on my blog around the time of my birthday so I thought it would be a good idea to repeat that this year. With another pattern obviously ;) Hope you will enjoy this little Bunny embroidery pattern! It's got a spring-like feel to it, at least I think it has. I'm looking forward to see it stitched (who will be the first?). You are welcome to put a link on your blog but please link back to the post not just to the download. Thanks! Oh and don't forget to post your Spring Bunnies on my Flickr grou p or on Facebook.

You can download the pattern here: Free Spring Embroidery Pattern. Enjoy!

Fishbone Stitch

2011-03-31T17:29:00.001+02:00

Sorry for the lack of embroidery posts lately! I have been busy doing a fun but secret-for-now project which I obviously can't share and I just didn't have time (or energy) to work on the embroidery projects I had been working on before.

There was a tiny bit of progress though. Here's a little detail of the Wolpentinger embroidery. I thought the Fishbone Stitch would be perfect for Wolpentinger's feathers. I got the idea when I saw this embroidery by Annet. I did a little try out using only one thread but that looked too delicate on this chubby Bavarian rodent, so I settled for two threads in a nice 'golden' shade. I had to look up the Fishbone Stitch in my Embroidery Stitch Dictionaries and found it in three of the books. My Fishbone stitch is clearly not perfect but it will do for the moment.

I'm also working on a second pattern by the way and for a change I won't show or tell before it's completely done. Something which I find extremely difficult to do!

Attack of the Giant Jelly Pudding & winners of Alphabet Glue!

2011-03-28T16:45:00.002+02:00

How about these cute little houses? This is only one of the many awesome projects from the Alphabet Glue magazine and the girls really enjoyed making these houses. The one on the left is inspired by 'Bear in the Big Blue House' and the one on the right is based on the story cards that can also be found in the magazine. Hope Mr. Giant Jelly Pudding won't ruin the houses, he seems like a gentle character though!

So..without further ado I will now announce the winners of the Alphabet Glue giveaway as chosen by the oh so boring Random Generator. Congratulations to: Elsa, Saricchiella & Pameladawn! Each one of you will receive this wonderful e-zine per email later today!

Thank you Annie from Bird and Little Bird for letting me host this giveaway!

Update: Saricchiela please send me an email at followthewhitebunny [at] e-tropolis [dot] nl , I don't have your email address!

London adventures

2011-03-28T10:59:00.000+02:00

Carrot Orange Juice at Leon's

I'm totally exhausted after my three day visit to London with my best friend Caroline, but I had so much fun! We arrived really early Friday morning and after eating some breakfast in Covent Garden we spent most of the day shopping. In our case that meant mainly looking at things and not exactly buying a lot of stuff. On the second day we planned to go to one of Europe's largest bookstores (Waterstones on Picadilly Circus) and we were quite surprised to find Picadilly Circus and the surrounding streets very much deserted except for lots of police officers.

Being the curious little bunny that I am, I asked a police officer what was happening. Apparently there was a large protest March planned later that morning. As we were more in a book buying than a protesting mood we moved along to have a look around in the bookstore. Lots of choice but I finally settled on this little stack of books:

After a stop at Leon's (a sort of healthy eco-everything-friendly fastfood chain which I can recommend to anyone visiting London, a good tip from my fellow Feeling Stitchy blogger Jo) we visited the Tate Gallery. A visit I thought was a little disappointing. Tate Gallery was located quite far away from the nearest Tube Station and due to all kinds of construction and building activities the entrance was hard to find. I had hoped to see some iconic pieces in the museum too but that didn't really happen either.

Me at Holborn Tube Station hanging out with some Egyptian Peeps of approx. my age

Our visit to the Victoria and Albert museum the next day however was great. The part of the museum I wanted to visit the most, the textiles, was closed but there was much other awesome stuff to see. And we also had a wonderful lunch there. At the museum shop I picked up some pretty reproduction fabric and a cute tea towel.

Repro Sea weed fabric from the V & A

Cute Arts & Crafts Tea towel

I would have loved to visit the Natural History Museum too but sadly we didn't have the time. We were pleasantly surprised that entry to all these museums was free as well.

I will be back again later today, to announce the winners of the Alphabet Glue E-zine!

Post-it Quilt

2011-03-23T11:41:00.001+01:00

I never think a lot about a quilt before I start one. Don't want to do calculations of how much yards or fat quarters I need. So I just start and reckon that if I need more fabrics I can always order more, right? Wrong!

I started on this Fat Quarterly Quilt Along Quilt last year intending to make it larger than the 36 by 36 inch it is now. Because I wanted to use a lot of different fabrics (from my stash) I thought the blocks at least needed to have the same center to add a little consistency to the 'design' (beside the colour pink). So I chose a cute yellow with white dot fabric of which I had a quarter yard. That clearly was not enough to cater for a larger quilt. And I couldn't find any more of this particular fabric either! Also, on second thought (after I already had made several blocks) I thought that the little yellow squares looked a lot like little post-it notes. So I'm calling this the Post-it Quilt. It's also a bit wonky (seams of the blocks don't match in the rows) and I definitely have to re-sew the bottom row to the one above that too. I'm not really 'Quilter of the Year' material am I? But all in all I think it still looks kind of cute (for a wonky quilt)

Now I also have a question for all of you that are more experienced quilters.

In quilting 1/4 of an inch is the usual seam allowance when you make blocks etc. This is the foot on my machine. On the front it has these three red marks. Instead of aligning my fabric to the red mark on the right I use the inside of the foot. It works for me but I was wondering if that is the normal thing to do?

Now don't forget to enter my little giveaway of the fabulous e-zine Alphabet Glue. Not many entries yet so please take a look!

Alphabet Glue Giveaway (for book loving families)

2011-03-21T14:10:00.001+01:00

These are two books from my youth, in Dutch of course.I loved reading (and still do!) and I think I literally read every book in the Primary School library. I particularly loved books by Roald Dahl and Enid Blyton's Famous Five. I was also very impressed by the Heidi trilogy I read, probably because of the dramatic story it tells. With very little other diversions, such as tv (hardly any shows for kids) or computer games (not invented yet, except maybe Pong) I guess reading was an obvious way to pass the time when I was younger.

So you will understand that I, as a parent and as a book lover, was thrilled to learn that Annie (of Bird and Little Bird fame) was working on an e-zine for 'kids and their grown-ups' about books and reading. The first issue of Alphabet Glue was launched this week and it's absolutely wonderful! It's packed with fun activities for kids to deepen the wonderful experience of reading and story making. There's a list of Spring reads, a lovely set of story cards to inspire unique tales or even drawings, a library scavenger hunt, some fun craft activities too and much, much more. Perhaps the most special thing of all is that the love for books and reading shines through every page of Alphabet Glue!

a project from Alphabet Glue: tiny box accordion books

Now I have three copies of Alphabet Glue to give away! So if you'd like the chance to win a copy please leave a comment on this post before noon (Central European Time) the 28th of March and tell me what your favourite children's book is and why!

Be sure to leave your email for me to find, either in your comment or in your profile. If you can't wait to get hold of a copy of Alphabet Glue (which is totally understandable) go here to buy one. Can't wait to find out about your favourite books!

Old tricks

2011-03-19T18:13:00.000+01:00

I'm up to my old tricks again and created another furry creature with a kerchief. No more kerchiefs after this little Wolpentinger is done, I promise! Well not for a while anyway... I have no idea how this pattern will end up looking (if it will become a pattern at all). Somehow I'm not able to come up with a finished pattern drawing so I just started stitching and the pattern develops as I go. Or not, in which case this will be the last of this Wolpentinger you see.

Many, many thanks to all my embroidery friends who have purchased the Cherry Blossom Doe pattern to help me raise some money for the survivors of the earthquake in Japan. I'm really touched by your generosity. If you haven't purchased the pattern yet but would like to please do so quickly. It's available until tomorrow.

Oh and don't forget to check out this giveaway. You can win my Princess and the Pea pattern and lots of other fab goodies!

Buy a Cherry Blossom Doe Pattern for Japan!

2011-03-17T19:49:00.001+01:00

Remember this pattern? I have been meaning to make a new version of the Cherry Blossom Doe Pattern for a year now but haven't come round to it yet. I am now re introducing the pattern in the shop for the next couple of days to try and raise some money to help survivors of the Earthquake in Japan. If you fancy a copy of this pattern and want to help please visit the shop and buy the Cherry Blossom Doe pattern this weekend! Amy from Magpie patterns has started a fund raising page here, and I will donate the proceeds there. Thanks in advance!

Happy Mail & a sewing session with a five year old

2011-03-17T17:00:00.000+01:00

There was much awesomeness in my mailbox yesterday. The very lovely Katy sent me two sewing books! See and Sew is a sewing book for children which is perfect because I have just started to teach Luna a few basic sewing skills (more about that later) It's a lovely book with lots of cute vintage illustrations, basic (embroidery) stitches and clear instructions how to make simple projects. Most kids will probably need some help from their parents with most of the projects I think. As an extra Katy added Cath Kidston's Sew book with 40 cute and easy projects. Thank you so much Katy!

These are a few strips I made together with Luna on my Husqvarna. We are making a little doll quilt for her toy horse. First she chose some fabrics from my scrap stash. Luna actually requested Heather Ross Unicorn fabric but I only have one little square left and she quite happily settled for a purple and green extravaganza instead. ;)

I then cut the scraps in 3 inch squares and let Luna 'design' the lay out on the floor. The lay out got mixed up again when she brought the squares to the machine but that's o.k. Sitting on my lap, I let her guide the fabric through the machine, back stitch at beginning and end and raise and lower the foot. I also let her use the pedal while I was sewing to give her a feeling of pressure on the pedal and speed of the machine.

Does that sound like a good first lesson for a 5 (nearly 6) year old in using a sewing machine? Next time we are putting the strips together to finish the quilt top. Do you sew together with your kids? I thought it was fun but I must admit that it definitely helps that she really wants to learn how to sew!

Vintage find: Le livre que j'aime

2011-03-15T16:24:00.000+01:00

This illustration is from a French Reading Book from the fifties that I bought recently. It's called Le livre que j'aime and it's just about the level of French I can handle reading so I might even learn a thing or two from the book. For some reason everything sounds better in French doesn't it? I was especially charmed by the fact that French Wolfs apparently say 'Hou!Hou!' and French Ducks say 'Coin,coin,coin'.

And how about this illustration! I bet this snowman is très froid. Wouldn't this image make the cutest embroidery pattern? Au revoir for now, I hope you enjoyed taking a peek in Le livre que j'aime.

Sunday Stash #38 A Fabric I had to buy

2011-03-13T13:31:00.000+01:00

There haven't been many Sunday Stash posts lately! Mainly because I joined the Stash Pact 2011 group on Flickr which has made me much more conscious of my fabric buys. But sometimes you need fabric, to finish something you are working on for example. So I needed to buy some fabric and because I already was paying for the shipping I could not resist to add the Tammis Keefe Cat Fabric(by Michael Miller) to the lot. I also bought some solids and the pink dot fabric, which I thought would coordinate nicely with the Cat Fabric. I think the Red and the Pink fabric are a pretty good choice but I'm not sure about the Charcoal. The other fabrics were already in my stash and I think especially the Newspaper print would be awesome to use with the Tammis Keefe fabric.

In my hoop: Wednesday's Vintage Busy Birds

2011-03-09T12:42:00.000+01:00

I have such a soft spot for vintage embroidery patterns. The one in my hoop right now is the 'Wednesday' of a Vogart Days of the Week Birdie Pattern which traditionally has a sew, embroider or mend theme. The fabric came from my stash and I think it's soft tones are perfect as a background for these busy birdies! I bought the pattern some time ago on Ebay, it was most probably in a lot of several patterns. Many fun vintage embroidery patterns (but not the Vogart ones) can also be found in the Hoop Love Vintage Transfers Group on Flickr, where collectors very generously share their vintage pattern finds.

P.s. It may not be vintage but do check out the Feeling Stitchy March Stitch Along Pattern. It looks like a fun pattern to stitch!

Not quite what I expected

2011-03-07T13:17:00.001+01:00

With a tiny business like mine even the smallest feature or media attention is welcome and appreciated. This month you can find a couple of my embroideries (with 2 patterns) in British sewing magazine Sew Hip. I think the set of embroideries on printed fabrics turned out pretty cute. Normally I would be thrilled about something like that but it's a pity that neither my full name or even the 'Follow the White Bunny' name is mentioned though. So it's not very likely anyone will ever be able to connect me to this feature. Except the peeps reading this post of course. ;) I've contacted them about it and hopefully things can be straightened out. Anyway, if you are in the UK you can check out the magazine. There is also a pattern in the same issue for a cute 'Dials' bag for little boys by Joey Ramone which is one of the best 'boy' projects I have seen lately!

Later this week I will be reporting about my sewing 'adventures' with my youngest daughter. We are making a doll quilt together for her toy horse (from the Toy Story 3 movie) Bullseye.

Out and about: about peaks and strange German Creatures

2011-03-06T10:32:00.000+01:00

Little Train Station on our way to the top of Germany's highest mountain.

The whole Bunny family went away for a couple of days to the snowy Alps. Husband and kids went out skiing most of the time with the little bunnies in ski classes. They even did some bits of black runs and made so much progress! I mainly played the role of supporter. I did manage to do some embroidery too. A cute vintage DOW pattern which I will show later this week.

How much is that German Antlered Winged Giant Squirrel Thing in the window? I have no idea but I do know he never leaves home without his little jug of Schnapps strapped to his body. ;)

And this is me, in a not very flattering ski jacket with bulky sweater underneath. The view on the top of Germany's highest Mountain, the Zugspitse, is amazing though and the weather was beautiful as you can see.
It was nice to be away but it's good to be back too. The only mountains I have to face today are those of the dirty laundry but hopefully in between the washing-drying-folding activities I can squeeze in a little sewing time too!

My kitchen window & a bit about an awesome book

2011-02-25T14:35:00.000+01:00

This is (a little bit) of one of the windows in my kitchen. Now that cup looks familiar doesn't it? Anyway, my husband recently painted all the windowsills and the door frame that leads to the garden in the awesome grey shade you see in the photo. Now I need to think about how to 'dress' the windows. I don't like the idea of long curtains and I'm not a big fan of blinds. So last week I stumbled upon this picture in Alicia Paulson's Embroidery Companion.

The Scandinavian looking bird design and the gingham curtains would look great in my kitchen! At least that's what I think but I'm not sure my husband feels the same way about these curtains. This reminds me that I also have a book full of Scandinavian Cross Stitch Designs which I bought on Ebay a little while ago. More about that another time!

Embroidery Companion is a great book. The subtitle is 'Classic Designs for Modern Living' and that's exactly what it is. The book is thoughtfully made with information about the basics of embroidery (for those just starting out) and many, many lovely projects and lots of pretty inspiring photos. I would say most of the projects featured are best suited to those with some experience in embroidery. And some require, relatively easy, sewing skills too (skirt, curtains etc) Besides 'regular' embroidery and cross stitch, there are also some crewel designs in the book. What I especially like about the book is that Alicia's love for embroidery speaks so clear from the text but also from the photos and the projects themselves. If you are attracted to Alicia Paulson's fresh and timeless style you will certainly be not disappointed in this book.
Wishing you all a wonderful crafty week(end)!