Eilynna's Honey Bunny Quilt

Here's a quilt I made for Eilynna - the top was finished in May 2011; the quilting happened off-and-on, over the next several months.

The pattern is Honey Bunny's Garden, from Crabapple Hill. I had picked up fat quarters of three quilting fabrics in peach, green and cream at Threads of Time, thinking they would work well together. I didn't have a plan in mind. A month or so later, I happened to see the pattern for this quilt, and immediately knew I would do it with those three fabrics. So I bought enough fabric to make the quilt. Or so I thought.

I embroidered the pictorial blocks on good-quality muslin, held double (this is the best. idea. ever. -- even though I am pretty anal about keeping the back of my work as nice-looking as the front, the second layer of fabric really helps). I suppose I could look up when I started, and how long it took to embroider the blocks, but I'm not really about that -- I enjoy it while I'm doing it, and enjoy the results when I'm finished.

As an aside, I'm always a bit perplexed when the first question out of someone's mouth is "How long did it take to do that?" What difference does it make? How long did it take you to play that round of golf? How long did it take you to read that book? How long did it take you to watch that TV program? What I do is my recreation, my creative outlet. Some of my friends are painters (art, not walls). I've never heard anyone ask them "How long did it take you to paint that picture?"

I cut the pieces for the blocks with a rotary cutter, and machine-pieced them. My piecing skills improved a lot as I worked through the blocks and assembled the quilt top.

I added a border to the top, which meant that I had to piece the backing fabric to make the back big enough (the fabric had sold out). So much for buying the quantity specified on the pattern -- next time, I'll buy extra, just in case I make some design changes.

I used Warm & White batting -- I love this stuff, because it's low-loft, behaves well, and you can quilt as far as 10" apart. I only wanted to quilt around the outside of the embroidered blocks, which finished at about 9"x9", so this filled the bill nicely.

The pieced areas of the quilt were hand-quilted in a cross-hatch pattern, fairly widely spaced.

Eilynna uses this quilt in her crib at Grandma & Grandpa's house when her mommy & daddy are at work.