Diana

It's freeeeeeeeeeeeeezing cold today, so please excuse the rubbish indoor photographs of my latest rabbit.  And yes, by the way, Tamasin's Kitchen Bible is a great book - as is Short and Sweet by Dan Lepard.

This is Diana - a cotton version of the rabbit pattern I've been working on recently.  I had a few concerns about making her in cotton, and now I remember why.  Not only is it quite thin and difficult to sew up the openings after stuffing, but it's very difficult to joint.  I remember trying a bear in cotton a little while ago - I may even have blogged about it.  When I put the joints in, the whole thing went down the toilet: every time the joints were turned, the cotton twisted with them - the fabric just wasn't 'heavy-duty' enough.

With Diana, I have used nut & bolt joints for her legs, but her arms are string jointed.  Because she is bigger than the other rabbits I've made, her head is heavier, and I thought string-jointed legs might not be sturdy enough to hold her upright.  The nut & bolt joints work okay - although as suspected, the stitches over the openings are not particularly neat.  When you sew a stitch through cotton and pull it tight to close an opening, the hole made in the fabric by the needle stretches and widens considerably.  There must be a way of solving this - lots of people make 'softies' out of cotton fabric - but I haven't figured it out yet.

I'm not very happy with her nose - the print of the fabric is busy enough without it, but I can't think how to solve that one either - I can hardly leave her without a nose. 

The general conclusion I've come to is that cotton rabbits don't really work [sadly].  I'm still very enamoured of my black cashmere rabbit, so I might try a larger version in cashmere.