Another year, another zodiac animal cross-stitch pattern! This year we celebrate fictional rabbits, unlike the real-life rabbits that are one of the many persistent pests in the area I live in currently.
“Hey, us voles were here first!”
I imagine that people who live in areas plagued by deer may have similar, seemingly contrarian attitudes towards those majestic creatures…that are an absolute menace. In fact, the only “oh geez, here they are again” local wildlife that I don’t think anyone has any sentimental feelings for may be wild turkeys. Have you ever heard a turkey scramble around on your house’s massive plexiglass skylight? (Yes, they can fly up onto roofs.) Or sat on a bus waiting for a turkey gang to exit the roadway? Interrupted your memorial service as they have completely taken over the local cemetery? Bunnies would never.
Let’s get straight to the pattern
As I am more of a “cross-stitch pattern maker” versus an “illustrator”, I typically rely on other people’s work to serve as a foundation for patterns, which I then kludge together in my pattern software until it looks semi-decent. Sometimes I do look at pixel art as a reference, but often it’s better to look for simple, flat-color vector art that can provide a ‘stencil’ of sorts for me to work with.
For this pattern, I was a little worried, as I needed a simple rabbit illustration where said bun-bun was looking straight at the camera, as it were. Meanwhile, most illustrations posted were quite understandably in profile…but luckily, once the actual year changed over, there was a bumper crop of bunnies, and I found a suitable reference pic for sketching out the bunny’s head and ears outline. I also (sadly) erased the cute little hairbow and cloak it was wearing, re-worked the ears, added some larger, more detailed eyes straight from an Eevee cross-stitch pattern, and did some last little tweaks for proportioning and symmetry. The final product is below.
Some notes:
- My usual Don’t Sell This Free Pattern or Stuff You Make From It blah-blah-blah disclaimer.
- You can stitch this on white cloth and not have to do the white stitches. The tradeoff is less contrast, but hey! Big time-saver. You can also stitch another color rabbit. Go wild!
- I put some DMC numbers for the other two colors, but you can use whatever you want.
kelp 