True Love

Hello again,

It has been raining all day today, so I had some time to make another LO.

As soon as I saw the challenge over at Kiddie Lit, I knew I wanted to make a LO of my daughter Chloë and her stuffed doggie "Woefie". She's had it since the day she was born, and she loves him to death. Were Chloë goes, Woefie goes.

The challenge was to create a LO based on the children's book
The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams:
"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real." "Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit. "Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt." "Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?" "It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

Isn't this a wonderful story?? I so love this, and this passage screams "Woefie" ... he's lost most of his stuffing, has been "operated on" more times than I can count, his eyes turned completely white after I put him in the washing machine one time ... he looks terrible, but to Chloë he's the most beautiful doggie of all times.

Here's my take on the challenge:


The title reads: "True Love" and the journaling reads: To Chloë Woefie is as real as the love she feels for him.

We had to incorporate some soft texture onto our LO to reflect the texture of the rabbit in the story, so I used Chloë's old T-shirt to make the heart balloons.

I will also be submitting this LO for the stitching challenge over at "The Next Step". Since the lovely ladies at "The Next Step" started their challenge site, I've tried to incorporate their monthly techniques in at least one of my LO's of that month. And boy was this a challenge for me. I don't ever use my sewing machine. My grandmother left me her sewing machine after she died more than 7 years ago, but I haven't used it since. Well, that's not exactly true, I did try stitching on a 8x8 LO once, and though it looked okay, it wasn't a huge success. But it really looks gorgeous on this page, and I think I have to thank Lucy for this, thank you so much for your awesome tips on machine stitching, it worked like a charm!



I started out by stitching the threads for the balloons, and added the hearts later on. What do you think, not bad for a first time sewing machine stitcher huh!! I'm feeling mighty proud of myself today LOL. Mind you, I haven't looked at the other entries yet, so it's quite possible mine looks totally worthless next to the others, but I so love the look of it. After the hearts I stitched the frame. If you look closely, you'll see that the first time I went around the edges, I stitched an almost perfectly straight line ... I really had to force myself to make some swirls the second time around ... I'm still having a hard time "making some sort of a mess... ". But I did it, and again ... feeling mighty proud of myself for that LOL.

I know this is a really simple LO, and I tried adding a few things, but I kept putting them away. I love it the way it is, not every LO has to be filled completely, right?

Okay, enough chatting for one day. Let me know what you think!

Love xxx Peggy