In sorting through the boxes (by now if you've been following my blog you might be tempted to wonder how many boxes of stuff does that woman have? -- the answer is lots.) I have started working on all the stored textiles and came across these charming beauties below -- a trio of flannel, handstitched bunnies. My mother was delighted to see them again and told me she had made them when she was seven years old. She was sitting on the back porch eating lunch when the idea of a bunny puppet with snaps for eyes came to her. She cut it out and promptly stitched it up (the one on the left with winsome smile and shinning metal eyes) between bites of the sandwich.
Others were to follow, especially as she now had a handcranked child's sewing machine that did fancy chain stitch on the bottom of the "mother" bunny's blue skirt. She created stories about them and the "girl sprouts" with their green uniforms and merit badges. In her teen years there was a Bunny Puppet Theatre. Let's just say the bunny totem spoke early and often to my mother throughout her life.
I am a magpie (all those filled boxes remember?) but I seem to get a long very well with bunny-totem women. After all, my great consoeur in myth and folklore has been editor,artist, and author Terri Windling -- most definately another woman with a deeply invested bunny totem. If you've not seen her lovely bunny paintings for children such as "Teatime" at the top, and "Bunny Troupe," above, stop by her studio and have a look here. Terri also wrote a terrific article for the Journal of Mythic Arts, "The Symbolism of Hares and Rabbits," which I thought was one of the more lavishly illustrated articles we did...and which includes a gorgeous Windling painting, "The Hares of Pink Hill," which lets us know Bunny girls do grow up into lissome hares and rabbits.
Before I photographed my mother's happy trio, we washed them carefully, hung them on the line, stitched a few repairs to the ears...and figured they are now good for another 72 years. Go Bunnies.
