A bunny for Easter

If you've never read Posie Gets Cozy, the blog by Alicia Paulson, I won't be at all insulted if you click over to her blog, get lost, and never come back here. Her life seems like the perfect weekend day I can never quite manage to have, AND they've been having dress and sweater weather in Seattle for a while now, which I'm jealous of as I contemplate between heavy spring coat and down jacket on the daily. She does beautiful sewing and embroidery projects and sells patterns and kits on her website. About 6 months or so ago, I purchased the pattern for Miss Maggie Rabbit and have been not patiently waiting to have enough time to dig in and make her up. I'd actually hoped to do it for Christmas but ran out of time. That's ok, because Easter is a perfect, if not obvious, time to gift a little bunny.

(I also finally discovered the magic of freezer paper. So much better than pinning it all out!!)

You guys, I loved making this little softie so much. Everything but her dress was sewn by hand, and it falls right into my recent love for hand stitching. I've made a few machine sewn softies in the past year with the felt you buy in sheets from Joann's, but this time I sprung for the recommended National Nonwovens wool blend felt from Prairie Point Junction, and I don't think I'll ever go back! Other than shipping, it's not that much more than the polyester stuff, and it was a joy to work with. It's much thicker and smoother than the craft store stuff, and I'm hopeful that it won't pill as much as the bunny gets loved.

I'm normally a modern, graphic print kind of gal, but the pattern pictures for this sweet bunny had me pushing myself to go for softer, more vintage looking prints like this one for the lining of the little bunny ears.

She has little boots. I mean, come on. Seriously, so cute. One addition I made was a fuzzy little pompom on her tush for a tail. Some of us are really into tushies and puffballs recently, so I had to. Of course, I didn't photograph this, but trust me, it's cute and worth it. I contemplated waiting to write up this post until I took some fancy finished object photos of Miss Maggie, but the reality is that I'll probably never get around to it. I've been finding that I'm more busy with life than with the documenting of it at the moment, and I think that's ok.

I got this one nighttime shot of Maggie all ready to go in her basket, with bunny jammies as a blanket on a bed of seriously messy paper grass. I went back and forth about knitting her cape, but I'm glad I did. The little dress looked a bit too much like jammies without it. Of course, Maggie is currently nakie other than her boots, which I intentionally sewed on because I was not about to tie and re-tie embroidery floss laces. The best news is that Miss Maggie Rabbit is currently quite loved, and that's the best part of any handmade gift. I won't even mind if she pills, because it's a sign of having been snuggled. I have the itch now to make more felt softies!!

One final Easter note. I tried the Pinterest recipes for natural dyes 2 years ago, and had a total fail. Either they did nothing at all to the eggs, or in the case of the no fail turmeric dye, they just peeled right off the shell! Last year I went traditional and got actual color from a Paas kit, which was fun and no-fail. This year, I found a crazy expensive natural dye kit ($10, for those wondering what crazy expensive in terms of egg dye is), and gave it a shot. Fortunately/unfortunately, it worked great! The dozen eggs we got were a mix of brown and white, and this kit even colored the brown eggs on the right of the carton above. It took much longer than a Paas kit, as the eggs soaked for 15-20 min rather than 3 or so, but we just did some coloring in between and set the timer to check on them. I might try this again next year....or maybe I'll try the food coloring version that's floating around Pinterest this year. :)