Stitching Friends Forever

April Post Two
RJ's Grab bag/Jutta's bunnies
SAL update/Schoolhouse series
Update on the French village

We hope you had a joyful Easter with family and friends.   Good Friday brought a big storm to Gainesville and we lost power for two days.   But, it came back just in time to put the ham in the oven and prepare our Easter dinner.  Mary celebrated the day with her family and lots of good food too.

This month's theme is bunnies and I have a special bunny project to share.  Last year, Jutta was giving away adorable pieced bunnies on her blog. Have you ever seen something that you immediately fall in love with?  That happened to me.   I didn't think I would win so I was thinking could I teach myself to make something like that. But, I actually won!!!

I can remember the day my package arrived.  My husband walked in carrying a package and said "RJ, you got a package from Germany".  I was so excited that I couldn't open the package quick enough.  It was even prettier in real life. Jutta's work is so beautiful and perfectly done.

Jutta's lovely pieced bunnies

My first instinct was to make a wall hanging but I have such limited wall space in my house.  And, I wanted it somewhere that everyone would see it.   I was sitting in a chair in my family room one day staring at the sofa and there it was a whopping big brown check pillow on the sofa.   I thought why not a "Stitching Friends" pinafore.   So off I went to the store to pick up some fabrics.   I found a nice brown fabric with circles, a pretty paisley and some really nice quilters cotton batting.

Paisley and circle fabrics

I added the brown printed fabric to the top and bottom and then added large pieces of paisley to each side.   Next came some quilters batting.  Then the back was made out of the brown circle fabric and finally lined.  Ribbon ties were added with buttons to the sides. I could not find the brown ribbon I bought so I used some white ribbon for the time being but will change it.

Bunny pinafore

But the fun part was adding the whiskers, the yo yo pin to the girl and the bow tie to the boy.  Putting the buttons on broke two needles because of the thickness of the fabrics but finally it worked!

Closeup of the boy bunny and his bow tie

Closeup of the girl bunny and the yo yo pin

Closeup of the sweet couple "Hanna and Francis"

Pieced bunnies from Jutta
Fabrics from Joanne's

                                                                     
A lot of patterns name their bunnies so I thought I would do that too.   I named them Hanna and Francis after my German grandparents.   I smile every time  I look at them and think of my sweet Oma and Opa and my sweet friend Jutta in Germany.

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SAL Update

We are all merrily moving along on our Sal "Summer Schoolhouse".  The floss colors are so pretty and they have been a lot of fun to stitch.  You can find our good friend Meg's blog here where she has more info.

Meg's SAL after 31 hours:

Mary's SAL after 18 hours:

RJ's SAL after 31 hours:

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RJ's French Holiday Village update

Here are my last two French Christmas Village stitches.   Next month, I will start to finish them.  After making the Poinsettia Hotel, I thought my village needs a B&B too.  So I pulled out another old pattern called "Holiday House" by LHN.  The only changes were to add a sign called LaCour  which means the Courtyard.  I also added a hanging sign that says B&B.  And, I changed the topiaries to one ball so there was room for the hanging sign.  I had to make a few adjustments to the windows but all and all this one was easy.

One day I received an email from our good friend Robin asking if I could use the Gazebo by CCN for my holiday village.   The Gazebo is a summer stitch but I thought I could winterize it and said I would love it.   I changed the grass to snow, the sun and sky to snowflakes, and the potted summer flowers to urns of topiaries with little red lights.   Then I added a sign that reads Noel for Christmas and a cute little wreath.   The pretty bluebird was replaced with a red cardinal.  

The original pattern

The gazebo after holiday changes

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We want to thank you all for stopping by and visiting with us.  Your comments are much appreciated.  Special thanks to Jutta for the pretty bunnies I used for my grab bag today. We will be back in about ten days with our third April post.  It is our Stitchers Choice post which should be fun.  Looking forward to seeing what you all have been stitching and sewing.  Hope you are enjoying beautiful Spring days. 



                          “Spring is Nature’s way of saying ‘Let’s Party.”
                                                    Robin Williams