My rabbit is finished!

Yes I’ve finished my little vintage bunny!  I began by downloading a vintage (copyright free) image.  Then I resized it and printed it out onto Sulky Sticky Fabri Solvy.  I added a little French text – which very simply says (providing I can remember my French from my schooldays) “Leaping Rabbit.”

Then I began to stitch.  I’ve always enjoyed stitching fur, deciding which way to direct my stitches and which colours to blend together.  But actually embroidering over a COLOURED printed image is a new departure for me.  I am hoping that it makes stitching fur more accessible and less scary for more people to try.  Certainly it removes a lot of the trial and error and guesswork – the only difficulty I found was being absolutely certain my stitching was dense enough so that when I dissolved away the Sticky Fabri Solvy the background fabric wouldn’t show through.  And eventually the time came when I’d worked the final stitch and had to do exactly that, leaving just my little bunny behind ….

And here he is!  He’s still a little damp here after being well soaked to remove the Fabri-Solvy.  When he’s all nice and dry I’m going to combine him with some vintage French ticking fabric to create a cushion – the pattern will be in the March issue of the Bustle & Sew Magazine.  I took lots of photos as I went along, and will include very detailed instructions if you’d like to try your hand at stitching fur yourself.

If you love the look but don’t want/have enough time to spend stitching fur for yourself then our Spring Bunny kits are a nice alternative!  My new order of 4″ wooden hoops has arrived so I now have plenty of these in stock over in the Bustle & Sew store.  They make a great stitch for Easter (which is early this year) and would be a lovely gift – and a lot kinder to the waistline than chocolate!