Embroidering fur – there is another way!

As soon as it’s warm enough I love to take my work – whether that’s my laptop or sewing – out into the garden to enjoy the fresh air and sunshine.  I’d love to be able to tell you that the picture above is of my flowerbeds, but regretfully not – this picture was taken last week when we visited Bristol Zoo.  My borders look rather more like this….

Everything squashed flat by a rather large round Newfie bottom!  I suppose that if you call your dog Daisy, then you should be prepared for her to enjoy sitting among the flowers!  But I digress. At the weekend when it was so very hot, I spent quite a bit of time outdoors working…..

…and in the bottom corner of the photo above you can see one of the first patterns for the June issue of the Bustle & Sew Magazine… a baby bunny surrounded by a simple floral garland.  (The current issue includes the pattern for the kitten below).  I really enjoyed stitching the kitten as embroidering fur is one of my favourite things to do, and isn’t really that hard once you’ve grasped the (two) basic principles.

But it is time-consuming and I know some stitchers still feel it may be too difficult (it’s not!) to attempt.  So I thought that for this month’s issue I’d try stitching fur in an even easier – and much less time consuming – way….

This little bunny is shown mounted in an 8″ hoop.  He is worked in just a single strand of floss and his fur uses only two shades.  There is plenty of space between the stitches, which are simple straight stitches, and the darker colour is used only sparingly for his chest, cheeks and the top of his head.  The most important thing in this design is to ensure that you angle your stitches in the right direction.  A good general guide is to remember that the direction of an animal’s fur radiates outwards and backwards from their nose – if you bear this in mind it’s hard to go wrong.

I hope you like him – he reminds me a little of a rabbit Daisy caught a long time ago.  I remember walking down the hill towards home with the Newfies and noticing Daisy was carrying something furry in her mouth.  I asked her to “drop it” – amazingly she did – and even more remarkably the furry bundle turned out to be a rather surprised looking baby rabbit who, after giving himself a little shake, hopped off up the hill to rejoin his family – a little soggy, but otherwise completely unharmed!