Paint & stitch bunny

I am so far behind in writing up projects that it is almost funny. If I carry on at this rate I will end up lapping myself, making next year’s card before I’ve written up the previous one! As it is, I am currently only six months behind — this card was made for my sister-in-law’s birthday last September.

And as it was for my sister-in-law, it could only be a bunny rabbit. I showed a selection of bunny designs to my other half and he chose this one for her. It’s a little different from the other paint & stitch designs I’ve done as they were all enclosed designs whereas on this one, the bottom of the bunny is open. I made life simpler for myself by choosing to make it a white bunny, that way the fade out between the design and the plain cotton background looks softer. Being a white bunny on a white background meant that I had to work harder to make the colouring interesting though; I added some gentle shadows beneath the chin and arms to give it a little dimension and then decided to add a yellow glow from the moonlight.

The trickiest part was adding the individual stars. If I had been stitching on double thickness cotton (which I usually do for embroideries that aren’t going to be made into a card), I could probably have got away with trailing the thread from one star to the next across the back of the fabric. I tried using two layers once for an embroidered card and quickly decided that I wasn’t going to do it again: it was just too bulky and too difficult to ensure it laid flat. Working on a single layer of cotton, even with a relatively light-coloured thread, meant that trailing threads would show through and I didn’t want that, so I had to stitch the stars singly or in pairs, starting and finishing my stitching underneath the stars. A little fiddly, but worth the effort.

If you are interested in learning more about the work that goes into creating these cards, take a look at my write-up of the paint & stitch card process.