Sleepy cashmere rabbit

This is the little item I mentioned a while back that I was working on after City of Craft. She's a very small rabbit made from cashmere wool knit fabric and she has a little floral dress with lace trim, a crocheted lace cap and blue and white polka dot bag.

She's in my shop as of today, along with lots of wristlets and the last chickadee clutch. I've been meaning to list these things for some time. It seems my inspiration to take photos doesn't always go along with sunny days. But I've done my best!

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Miss Fancy Rabbit

Well I haven't done a cute post in a while. Read ahead if you think you can take it.

This little miss is a young rabbit that I'm trying not to get attached to as she is being taken out this weekend as a thank you gift for one of my local friends.

with the side view you can see her white felted wool tail

As you can see, she's a little bit fancy, with Liberty fabric for her front, and a lace necklace (very fashionable). But just to show she's not a snob, she has sweet gingham ears.

I'm not sure how it happened, but when I was embroidering her face, her eyes ended up closed, I think she's a big sleepy head. I say big, but in fact she's very very small, at 5 inches tall, and most of that is ears. Are you wondering where she is going? Well it's a surprise but I can tell you later on..

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Nuigurumi style - small bear

she's fairly small, the wooden chair shows the scale

I've had the Japanese craft book nuigurumi style (ISBN 4-05-604179-2) for ages. This one is really popular so I'm sure most of you have seen it before. I've been wanting to make the bear on page 8:

Well actually I wanted to make the cat, which is what I thought it was, until about halfway through sewing it up when I was looking at the ears and thought, "hey, this is a bear.." I was oddly disappointed but then again she's still really cute.

Note the ears: round = bear, pointy = cat. I see that now.

Lots of people have made these patterns but I haven't heard any specific comments about trying to follow the patterns in Japanese. So here are my tips. The first step was cutting out the pattern pieces and the bear pieces are on the same page as the bird pictured next to her. Bradley helped me out because he noticed the character for "bear" and "bird" on the instructions page so he pointed out which pieces were for which animal.

outside doing some sketching

The bear instructions have a photo of the bear at the top so you can see you're in the right place. Then the next point is, of course, to read right to left, so just notice the numbering of each step and follow that.

daydreaming...

Along with the pieces for the body there are extra pieces for the clothes. In this case they are made up of rectangles - so there are no templates - you use the measurements given in the first column (far right) to cut out those pieces. Also the diagram shows the placement of each pattern piece on different pieces of fabric so that gives you extra clues about which piece is which but you can pretty much tell from the shapes. I couldn't find any reference to seam allowance so I cut the pieces assuming they included a seam allowance and sewed them up using 1/4" and it worked out fine.

There's a picture of a hand sewing needle on the instructions and I found that machine sewing was difficult with the small velvet pieces which shifted as I worked. So I decided to just sew the whole thing by hand and had good (albeit time consuming) results.

The little bag is my addition, as she needed somewhere to put her pencils..
p.s. Well I seem to be a regular on Apartment Therapy (this time asked by Beth). I was steeled for "how could you paint wood??" etc. but this time I got lots of nice comments. Yay!

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Mitzi's outfit

I'm not complaining because it really suits me, but when you're a freelancer who works from home the work is always there. So I find that I tend to work at all hours. In a way the weekends blur a bit into the week and I work as often in the evenings as in the daytime. Also we've been doing so much renovating on the house that there's always something to do even between contracts.

So one Sunday I decided to take the day off and not do anything for my illustration work, and also nothing on the house. No painting or chores or anything like that. And what I decided to do is something quite impractical and purely for fun. Hence, a full outfit for Mitzi.

She now has a gingham skirt with a box pleat on the front and one on the back. Then for her top she has a blue striped smock that attaches with a matching belt. It has a pocket with her initial.
But my favourite part of the outfit is the grey wool coat that goes over top with a large collar and working buttons and lace-trimmed pockets. Why would a small deer need three pockets? I'm not sure but it was a lovely day off.

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