Year of the Rabbit Sewing Kit

 

Have you heard 2011 is the Year of the Rabbit? That sounds good to me; rabbits have always been associated with luck, so I hope this will be a lucky year. Rabbits are also symbols of the coming spring, and I am pretty sick of blah winter rains and no sunshine.

I wanted to make a little "extra present" for my sister, who just had a birthday, but has been studying hard and deserves a little extra something just for being herself. As she and I both have a fondness for cute little woodland animals, I decided to make her gift rabbit-themed, to go with the new year, and lucky, sunny wishes. I made her a cute little sewing kit, including a needle book, a white rabbit measuring tape, and a little needle felted rabbit teacup pincushion. 

 

The tail of the white rabbit measuring tape is a ball of needle felted cream wool, which also serves as the pull tab for the measuring tape. I used a tiny shell button in the center of the rabbit to trigger the mechanism for retracting the tape. I decided to keep the design simple and not include any details in the rabbit except for a green eye. The rabbit body was made in much the same way as my owl tape measure.

The needle book is 6" square, with one center page. I fused Timtex between the layers of fabric and felt to make the books cover very rigid (more "book-like" than most fabric books). On the inside, I used little panels of felt to separate each type of needle. There are also some pockets for holding sewing machine needles, a needle threader, and a pair of Japanese thread snips. I found a little piece of vintage velvet ribbon use as the tie. For the heavy needles, I sewed down two rows of a Japanese crochet cotton lace I purchased from Daiso in Vancouver; the larger needles can thread easily through the holes in the lace.

Here is the inside of the needle book: 

The pin cushion was the most fun of the three little projects to make. I really love needle felting. It feels like magic crafting. Before I tried it, I didn't know what all the fuss was about, but now it is my favourite thing to do late at night. My rabbit is made of grey and white felt wool, his eyes are black seed beads and his nose is a few stitches with pink embroidery thread.  I really like the expression on the little grey bunny. He looks like he was disturbed from his lunch of felt buttercups by a nosey crafter, and he is just waiting for me to look away so he can go about his business.

There are a lot of other teacup pincushions out there. The first time I saw the beautiful little worlds in a teacup made by Mimi Kirchner, I knew I wanted to try to make one. My teacup is like a very simple version of the beautiful scenes she creates.

Happy Chinese New Year!

Happy New Year!

 

I wish you a wonderful New Year filled with creativity, learning and fun!

My blog is only one month old, but already I feel it has had a positive impact on how I approach crafting. I feel more motivated to complete projects that in the past may have lingered with neglect. Documenting my creative process is a challenging new creative outlet; using props, staging and lighting my photographs and making tutorials are all new to me and I hope to get better at it with practice.

I want to keep up my blogging momentum in 2011, and while I have never held much stock in New Years Resolutions (I am usually breaking them by the first week), I do want to set myself some achievable goals for the New Year:

#1. I am participating in the Craft Book Challenge! I like the idea of really USING the books and patterns I already have (see resolution #2). It will also ensure that if I ever suffer from "crafters-block" I have something to fall back on, so I always have something to share with you.

#2. Stash Busting! The Tiny Apartment is crammed full of fabric, trims, beads, paints, paper, glue, tools, canvas, wood, wire, and all manner of odd junk I think could be useful. I want to try to use as much from my own stash as I can, instead of buying new materials every time I have a new idea. (Um, except for this weekend, when my local Fabricland is having a huge sale. You see what I mean about breaking these resolutions??).

#3. At least a post a week. I managed 13 posts in 30 days! That's pretty darned good if I say so myself, but if I am realistic, it might not be achievable throughout the whole year. So I am promising you a post a week, and I mean to follow through.

So that's it from me. What are your plans for 2011? Are you setting yourself some goals too? I would love to hear about them! And if you have a big stack of beautiful pristine craft books on your shelf somewhere, I encourage you to join Liesl's Craft Book Challenge too (see the link in the sidebar).

Happy New Year from the Tiny Apartment!