When I say buns in the oven, I don’t mean I’ve been baking. And I certainly don’t mean the other kind either!

I’m talking about rabbits.

This week I started out trying to see if I could make a bear from the same strange, hairy, wool fabric from which I’ve been making dogs recently.

I got the stuff in my fabric swap last summer with fellow fabric-addicts Katherine and Martha, along with lots of other lovely scrips and scraps (as well as some bigger bits and bobs). They were in exchange for some of my large-scale patterned fabrics which are no longer suitable for the tiny things I make nowadays.

The only problem with the hairy fabric is that it frays like crazy, being made of loosely-woven wool fibres. So sewing dolls with it means being very, very careful not to split the seams whilst turning and stuffing. It’s also quite thick, almost blankety thick. Which means that things have to be made bigger, because you can’t make really tiny creatures out of very thick fabrics. Or so I thought…

I started making the bear and whilst stuffing the head, a seam split at the top. So I thought “never mind, I’ll just insert an ear there!”

For some reason I ended up adding long floppy ears instead of bear-type ears. Suddenly, what I was making was a rabbit, and not a bear at all. Once my big bunny was all done and dusted, I looked at my work table with a view to tidying up. It was covered in tiny scraps of hairy fabric, too small to make anything with. Or were they…?

As you may know, I hate waste. I rarely throw anything away that could possibly be used to make something else. For example, the bunny’s legs were once part of another work-in-progress that didn’t quite work out. Those legs had been kicking around (haha!) for a couple of years before they became bunny legs. So those leftover scraps got my brain ticking.

Scraps have been uppermost in my mind anyway this week, as I have been busy selecting a package of scraps to send to the USA. I’m participating in Ann Wood’s International Scrap Swap, part of her Scrap Festival – more on that in another post. So, inspired by Ann, instead of sweeping all those bits of woolly, hairy goodness into the bin, I saw a challenge and I went for it.

By folding up a snippet of fabric and sewing through with a matching thread, tucking all the fray-prone raw edges in as far as possible, I made a little ball. The little ball became a head, and soon, voila!

A miniature bunny was born!He’s less than two inches tall. A micro-bun!

I still had more scraps left. There were more buns in the oven. So I kept going.

I went to town on the next one a bit and gave him a waistcoat and a top hat. Because what creature ever looked bad in a silk waistcoat and a topper? Oh, and he also has pink eyes. Just because.

There are plenty more hairy fabric scraps lurking about. So it’s great to have found a good way to use them up.

I have a feeling that there are a good few more buns in the oven, before I’m done. ♥