"The Bunny Quilt"

Finished!

The design is from Edyta Sitar's book, Hop to It.

The first block I completed was the bunny block, and somehow, my family just started calling it "The Bunny Quilt", as in, "Mama, are you working on the bunny quilt again?"

It is all hand appliqued. After a lot of vacillating and fear (I was so afraid of messing it up!), I worked out a quilting plan: stabilizing quilting with walking foot (straight lines through the sashing, and in-the-ditch along the inner border); quilt each block; quilt the sashing and cornerstones; quilt the border.

For the quilting, I decided on McTavishing for all of the applique blocks. Since it is a dense filler with a lot of traveling back on itself stitch-wise, I used Aurifil 50/2 for all of the quilting. I'm really pleased with how it came out! But boy, it was not fast. Each block took a little more than an hour to quilt. It was scary at first, but the design really is easy to work with and flows so nicely.

I went with curvy lines in the sashing diamonds. Then I found a design I liked in Keep on Quilting Pattern Pack #3 by Keryn Emmerson, and used it in the cornerstones.

The inner border was inspired by a border treatment I saw in passing at the Thimble Pleasures blog (which I saved to my pinboard so I wouldn't forget where I found it!). I just thought it was so pretty, and it looked like something I could do. I think it ended up working really nicely.

For the outer border, I did feathers. Woo!!! Did you hear that? I DID FEATHERS! (*feeling mighty proud*) I spent a lot of time practicing first. I practiced at every opportunity-- with crayons while the boys colored, with sidewalk chalk on the driveway, in my notepad while taking minutes at the preschool board meeting, on my husband's whiteboard, in the sandbox at school (tracing the design with my finger)-- if I had a free moment, I was feathering. After about a week of that, I finally sat at the machine to try. And I was able to do it. And it didn't look too bad! I am so happy with how it came out.

The feathers are even more visible when one looks at the back.

The backing was pieced from my border fabric rejects/leftovers as well as a little bit of stash (those birds have been in my stash since 1999!). I really love how it came together! Scrappy and happy.

And, of course, the label.

Now I just need to find the perfect place to hang it!