You Are What You Eat

I didn’t think we had any bleach in the house and I thought that all our cleaning products were locked up securely.  But one day during what I thought was naptime, due to the quietness that followed book reading and tucking in, there was an Episode involving two children and some bathroom cleaner that evidently contained bleach.  Among other casualties was an orange waffle knit shirt of Trent’s that was minding its own business in a laundry basket.

Slight damage to Trent’s clothes is a bummer for Trent, but an opportunity for a big piece of often interesting fabric.  Sometimes it doesn’t work out, like the holes in the supposedly 100% wool black sweater that I unsuccessfully tried to turn into felted black cats.  Misleading label Gap, because although I’ve made unusable any number of wool items accidently by getting hot water near them, that sweater would not shrink. 

So after being frustrated/annoyed that bleach was sprayed on a basket of clean, folded laundry, I immediately though about making carrots.  But who wants a stuffed carrot?  Maybe a baby rabbit?  Rabbits like carrots and if you are what you eat, I could make a rabbit that looks like a carrot.

I made a vague pattern for the body, head, and ears with newspaper and wax paper, but made the arms and legs sock monkey style.  We had recently seem lop eared rabbits at both the zoo and the rodeo, so these two bunnies needed floppy ears. 

As it turns out, and this is not new information, I’m terrible at sewing on faces and embroidery in general.  So the night before Easter I was sitting on the floor in the living room, watching Austin Powers –which really stands the test of time- on VHS and cutting out embroidery floss while trying not to cut the rabbit faces open.  Of all the bits and pieces in my craft supply, the bag of felt scraps gets pulled out most often and it helped create the faces.

A few weeks ago, I was in a friend’s garage looking at a piece of furniture she was painting.  She said it didn’t look the way she imagined when she started, but it looked like her style to me.  Maybe because I don’t always start with a crystal clear picture in my head, my projects don’t end up exactly the way I imagine them at the beginning either, but at least at the end –for better or worse- I can tell that I made it.