Moon Gazing Hare – Ostara Celebration

The Spring Equinox will be on the 20th March this year – it has felt like a long slog from January to Spring and so it is delightful to be looking at the signs of new life everywhere. This little embroidery was so quick to do, yet satisfyingly pleasurable – I am really getting into slow sewing!

The inspiration came from these two little hares in my Pinterest feed – the delightful movement of Angela Daymond’s Running Hare is beautiful in its simplicity. The embroidery is called Kantha stitching – comprising mostly of running stitch. Angela produces a number of kits that are simply wonderful.

While the design was stunning – I did not want to simply replicate someone else’s design so I came up with my own. I love the concept of the Moon Gazing Hare, there are images all over the internet right now – because it personifies Spring so well.

I bought a cut up vintage table cloth in a charity shop – the linen is well washed and is a delight to embroider on. I roughly traced my design with a blue washable pen and simply stitched round. It’s like colouring in – such a lovely meditative practice.

There is a delightful sewing shop not far from me called the Jolly Stitcher they run knit and natters on a Tuesday evening – I am hoping to go along soon because the shop is a delight. They had a wide range of Anchor and DMC threads – I wanted the circles around the moon to deepen in shades of blue. They had the most beautiful silver DMC E168, that was just perfect for the centre of the moon. I used Anchor blues ranging from 178 to 120 although I had to be careful – I picked out a lovely shade from another section – but it was more of a green blue and did not match the others at all.

I began stitching with a two strand thread, as you can see from the picture above but it idd not really give the effect I was looking for – so I ended up doubling up with four strands. I kept the stitching quite short and did a sort of back stitch on the wrong side, because I wanted the stitches to be quite close to one another.

I used the darker blue for the curls in the sky and filled it with a lighter blue in between. It gave the piece more depth of colour. I found that the direction of the stitches were important – especially spiralling around the leg of the hare.

I used one of those hanging display hoops – and simply glued the fabric tightly against the inner frame. Once dry, I was able to trim the fabric back. I decided it needed a felt covering at the back to give some protection for the wall.

There are some elements of it that I feel could be improved, I would like to explore further the effect of closer stitching has on the overall tone of the piece. As a first project of this very effective stitching – I am pleased with the results.

Spring won’t be too far behind – hopefully!

ttfn x