"Oh my ears and whiskers, how late it's getting!" -- The White Rabbit
I've considered the idea of my own website for many months now, as Etsy no longer seems the best fit for my needle felting, but I want very much to continue to work on projects and characters in any spare time I have, and to connect with all of you who have followed my work over the past year or two. With my due date just a little over two weeks away, I've let time get away from me and now have been scrambling to get a website up and running before the baby comes.
So today, though the website still has kinks to work out, and sections that are barely started, including the shop portion, which will probably be empty for some months yet (until I'm settled into a schedule with the new baby), I want to introduce you to The Rabbit Trail. The Rabbit Trail features two blogs, one regular and one more occasional, a "creative" section, a food section, and a shop for my felted art. I'm excited to be incorporating more writing into my creative process again, and selling on my own site allows me much more flexibility.
I hope you'll swing over to see what I'm working on, read a post or two, or just look at the photos. But to entice you just a bit more, I'm offering a giveaway! If you visit the Cotton Tales blog you will see that my first post is in part about the March Hare, and by coincidence, I discovered that this year marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. So I decided to make a White Rabbit to give away to one of you lucky folks. Here are some photos of him; he's quite the dandy!
Because I'm not sure how the next few weeks will play out, I'm going to set up this giveaway a little differently than the last. To be entered to win the White Rabbit, I'd like you to leave me a comment on one of my blog posts (you won't be able to leave it anonymously, or I'll never find you if you win!) or share this blog post through Facebook. You can either do this through my Fibers of Being Facebook page, or you can click the "share" button at the bottom of this post. Please try to tag Fibers of Being in your comment, and be aware that if your privacy settings don't share your "shares" with the public, I won't be able to see that you've shared unless you are one of my FB friends. (Sorry for all the Facebook-speak!!)
I'm giving you LOTS of time to do this: deadline to be entered to win is Saturday, April 4, anytime until midnight. Only one entry per person. Depending on when baby comes, I will draw a winner sometime after that, but to allow myself a little wiggle room, I will plan to announce the winner by Thursday, April 17. I will announce much sooner if circumstances allow. U.S. residents only, please. Please contact me with any questions and thanks for helping me launch this new project!
Easy appliqued onesie project
The little bunny onesie I made over the weekend with its matching pants
I haven't had to buy any baby clothes for little N, thanks to lots of hand-me-downs. This is good in many ways... it saves money, resources, and time... it's "green"... but I'll be honest: It's been difficult NOT to want to buy a few sweet little outfits for her. Still, I've remained strong and am planning on treating myself to just a bit of shopping once she's here and I start to get a feel for her personality.
Like every expecting mother, I received an over-abundance of blankets at my showers, and so decided to return a few. In a moment of weakness, I opted for store credit rather than a refund at one of the shops, and ended up using part of it on a dear little pair of peach colored pants. My justification was that since there was no top to go with them, I would have to get around to that appliqued onesie project I'd been meaning to do for months.
So here is a photo diary of what turned out to be a really quick and fun project. I'm planning on making up a few more in the coming week; I have so many ideas for cute designs!
First I came up with my design, a little bunny, and sketched it on regular paper.
Then I cut out the bunny and cut small squares of my fabric and the webbing product to match the size of the bunny. I ironed the fabric and webbing together, following the instructions for the webbing.
I traced the bunny onto the paper side of my fabric square, then cut it out.
I used a second-hand Gerber brand white onesie, size 0-3 months. Gerber runs small, so it was pretty tiny. Pre-washed of course. I peeled the paper off my design, positioned the bunny where I wanted it and then covered it with a damp "press cloth." Pressed with a hot iron for about 15 seconds and the bunny seemed well-adhered to the onesie.
The webbing manufacturer says you could stop there, that the design will be secure using only their product. I don't know, that may very well be true. I wanted to add a little texture, though, so I decided to add a simple blanket stitch to the edge with embroidery thread. The hardest part of that was deciding what color thread to use! I went with the "safe" choice, a peach very close to the color of the pants.
Then I just used a bit of natural colored "chunky" size yarn to make a fluffy little tail. I sewed it in place and that's it! I don't think it took quite two hours to complete, and that was with lots of stopping to take photos, so it's really a quick project, especially if you skip the embroidery.
Hope this inspires you to take on one of the creative projects you may have been putting off. Pull out the fabric stash! Make a little mess! See what you come up with...
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