Half a Happy Baby Quilt

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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.