Introducing Beth Bunny

There have been lots of 'starts' in our household in the last few months, but precious few 'finishes', so I'm proud to have a 'nearly there' to show off today!  I've admired Alicia Paulson's Miss Maggie Rabbit pattern for a while now, and this week I not only managed to buy it, but make a version of it.  If you follow the link to the pattern you'll probably wonder whether in fact I followed it, so here's the rundown on why Beth is Beth and not Maggie:

The fabric:  The pattern calls for felt.  I didn't have any, and am determined to use up my stash.  What I did find was a small leftover piece of woven faux fur fabric.  Not only was it just enough to make Beth, but it is actually a scrap from when my Grandma made me 'Big Bun' when I was two (I'll take a photo when the young one wakes up, but safe to say I've always been very unimaginative in naming things!).  

The construction:  Felt doesn't fray, but my fabric will, so instead of exposed hand-stitching, I used a moderately wide zig-zag and a short stitch length on the machine to construct most of Beth.  To facilitate this I cut the ears about 4mm larger all round than the pattern shows, to allow for turning (I also ended up with nearly 1cm of seam allowance at the base of the ears this way).  I stitched along the edge of the fabric, so for the other pieces I figured that my seam allowance was about the same as Alicia used.

I decided that I wanted Beth's ears to stand up, so before I stuffed her head I pinned the seam allowance at the bottom of the ears to the side of her head from the outside.  I removed the pins after her head was firmly stuffed, and her ears definitely stand up!  Pinning the seam allowances to the top of her head would have given her floppy ears instead.

One drawback of my fabric choice was that I had difficulty seeing what I was sewing when it came to hand-sewing on Beth's arms and legs.  I went round each a couple of times just in case - I don't want to be fixing severed limbs later!

 

The colours:  I used a paler nose and whiskers for Beth, given her white fur, but I wish now that I'd made the whiskers the same colour as her nose.

The dress:  The dress is a cut-down of a peasant top that the young one wore when she was 3 months old.  It already had the smocking on the front, elastic on the sleeves, the ruffle on the bottom and a button tab down the back.  I used Alicia's pattern as a guide for the sizing of the pieces (although my sleeves are shorter and the dress is longer by the depth of the ruffle).  

The finishing touches:  I do have some red felt in the stash, and have cut out some little boots to finish her off.  All being well this'll happen before Sunday, so that Beth can be carefully placed for the young one to find on Sunday when her brothers are hunting Easter eggs.

Happy Easter!