Back Home {C2C 2019}

My big blocks have returned to me, and now I have the very tough decision of how to finish this quilt.

Here are all four of my blocks together:

Top row: Stephanie's block, Audrey's block

Bottom row: my block, Karen's block

As a reminder, my blocks are 18.5" unfinished. My original thought was that I would just add navy solid as the sashing and borders so that the quilt blocks would float.

Now I'm wondering about doing something a little more spiffy. I need to do some math and see how much fabric I have left. Adding 2.5" sashings would result in a 42" finished quilt. I could also do a simple sashing and some sort of pieced border, too.

What are your thoughts? Do you like big block quilts?

Audrey's Quilt {C2C 2019}

These blocks wrap up my commitment to the Coast to Coast traveling bee for 2019!

Audrey requested that we make blocks for a row quilt using white solid and Bonnie and Camille fabrics from the Happy-Go-Lucky line. She also asked that we pick blocks that remind us of our grandmothers.

Audrey made Granny Squares, Karen made Grandmother's fans, and Stephanie made Hungarian Posy blocks (a block she designed herself based on her grandmother's embroidery!)

For my blocks, I decided to go with -- baskets! The pattern I used was technically for an 8" block but I scaled it up to make 12" blocks.

Here's the first block that I used as my test block:

Since she requested enough blocks for a 72" row of blocks, I made six basket blocks.

This is (finally) on its way to Audrey and I will be showing off my blocks on Friday!

Sharing at Needle and Thread Thursday!

Karen's Quilt {C2C Bee 2019}

This go-round of the Coast to Coast bee has me working on Karen's quilt. For her quilt this year, she has a medallion quilt inspired by a few Kaffe Fassett florals.

Karen made the star center and Stephanie added the subsequent borders. 

I decided that my first order of business would be to add some smaller spacer borders. First I added a solid border in the blue that Karen sent along with the quilt and then I added a border of all 4" x 2" finished flying geese. These geese were made from the same blue solid and two different black tonal prints. I used my Accuquilt Go! cutter to cut all of the pieces and parts for my geese.

So, I actually had this plan in place for over a month and most of the cutting done before I finally got this section of the quilt added. Technically I'm a little behind now (and Audrey's quilt is sitting in a box waiting to be worked on!) but I didn't want to just add this section to the quilt so I got Audrey's blessing to hold onto the quilt a few extra days and add a little more to the quilt.

After a little bit of thinking, I decided on adding some half sawtooth stars to the quilt. I also used my Go! cutter to cut the triangles for these units and used 5 different fabrics for my half stars on the sides of the quilt (finished size 16" x 8") and quarter stars in the corners (8" finished).

I used both of the floral prints that Karen sent along with the quilt and then added in three fabrics in similar colors for the stars.

The big piecing was fast and really added a big punch to the quilt, as well as showing off the beautiful prints! Now Karen's quilt is 64 inches square!

This is already off in the mail to Audrey -- and I have Audrey's quilt from Stephanie waiting for me to start working on it!

Hope your weekends were full of productive sewing!

Sharing at Oh Scrap!

Don't forget to enter my giveaway here!

Stephanie's Quilt {C2C Bee 2019}

Being a part of the Coast to Coast bee is one of my favorite things! I just finished up the first assignment for the year.

Stephanie of Quilt'n Party made a beautiful quarter log cabin block as her quilt center. She requested a Southwest inspired quilt featuring richly colored fabrics. She sent a few additional fabrics in her quilt kit in addition to the ones featured here.

I decided to add a grey spacer border before I added my blocks to her quilt.

No Southwest-themed quilt is complete without a bevy of Rocky Mountain Puzzle blocks -- so that's what I got to making! I pulled yellow, orange, magenta, and a aqua/navy print from my stash and used a light blue and a second navy from the fabrics that Stephanie sent for the half square triangles. For the block centers, I used two fabrics left over from my Odori quilt, which I made last year.

Making these blocks from small cuts and scraps was a nice change from the other things I have been working on in recent weeks.

I also used three different backgrounds -- the Art Gallery tribal stripe, a white-on-white feather print, and a white-on-white stripe.

I did plan ahead a little bit so that most of my seams would nest (although not all) so that adding the blocks to the top was not as bulky or cumbersome.

This is ready to go in the mail and get sent off to its next destination -- Texas! I'm excited to see what Audrey added to my quilt and to see Karen's quilt and start planning what to add to it.

Have a lovely Tuesday -- don't forget that the next edition of the Daisy Chain mystery QAL comes out next Monday!

Sharing at Needle and Thread Thursday!

Early April Showers {Finished Quilt Top}

Here in Pennsylvania, there's been a lot of rain and a lot of snow since about mid-January. I think we've gotten our share of April Showers and we're only in the second week of March!

I also have April Showers on the brain because I have *finally* (yes, finally!) finished the quilt top of my Coast to Coast Traveling Bee quilt from 2017 -- made mainly from the April Showers line from Bonnie and Camille!

Here's the quilt the when it returned to me in 2017:

This quilt will likely live in the guest room (which is red and white, with a bit of navy -- as it is my husband's baseball room too) on the queen bed, so it needed to have just a *bit* of a border. Because the fabric line came out years ago, yardage of it was no where to be found at a reasonable price (since I'd like to keep both of my kidneys) so I found a similarly colored print from a Cluck Cluck Sew line.

I cut 3" strips and got to adding the borders. (I actually only needed 9 strips instead of the 10 that I cut -- I probably could have cut wider strips had I realized this sooner.)

Finally, a finished quilt top!

Now to decide how it will be quilted... hopefully that part won't take two years to accomplish!

Sharing at Let's Bee Social!

Coast to Coast Bee 3.0 {My Block}

A new year means the start of new quilt bees, including the Coast to Coast Traveling Bee! While we decided to put off the start of this year's edition of the C2C Bee until February, I have been looking forward to this bee restarting since we concluded last year!

As a reminder, here are my two quilt tops (neither are finished quilts yet, oops.) from 2017 and 2018:

This year, I took my starting block inspiration from my new hometown -- Gettysburg, PA! I found this quilt block that's actually called "Gettysburg" and scaled it to an 18" finished block.

For my fabrics, I pulled Kona Navy for my background and red, white, and aqua fabrics for the rest of the piecing. I decided to paper piece my square in a square units.

The best part about big blocks is how fast they are!

Instead of using this block as the start to a medallion, I'm going to ask each of my bee-mates to make their own 18" finished block inspired by a location -- with lots of state-inspired and history-inspired quilt blocks available, I hope this is a fun (and not overly difficult) request!

Here's a mock up of my design idea with my block repeated four times (but each person will choose their own block(s)!

My plan is that each block will have the Kona Navy background and I will also use the same fabric for the sashing. This will end up being more in the range of 40-45" square rather than a bigger throw quilt. This quilt is likely going to end up in our red bedroom (aka the baseball room) as a quilt for whichever chair ends up in that room as the "reading chair".

I will be working on Stephanie's quilt first this time around. Sharing at Linky Tuesday!

News and Notes {2019 Happenings}

Thank you to everyone for the well-wishes on our new home! We are still surrounded by boxes for the most part but things are getting better day by day.

Today I'm going to share some news, notes, and reminders about what's going on both here on Little Bunny Quilts and in quilt blogland.

First, I'm excited to share that I am returning as an Island Batik Ambassador for 2019. This year we are partnering with Aurifil, Hobbs, and Accuquilt (!!!) for our projects and there is an Accuquilt GO! system on its way to my new house! I've snuck a peak at the new box of fabric and it's beautiful! I'll have a full share of all of the goodies here on the blog in a few weeks.

Additionally, the Getaway blog hop continues, so don't forget to follow along with each day's posts! Here's a sneak peak of my project:

Next, I hope that you will strongly consider participating in some way in the Carolina Hurricane Quilt Project.

This project is being spearheaded by Carole at From My Carolina Home. Some details:

1. More than 4500 quilts are needed for those whose homes were completely destroyed
2. The project will go through Summer 2019 so plenty of time
3. I am matching top makers with longarmers to help get more quilts sent, forms are on the link and both top makers and more longarmers are needed.
4. There are five drop off locations in NC, with Wilmington as the distribution point
5. Completed quilts should be bed sized
6. Regular updates will be on Carole's blog. 

My plan is to make a number of tops from my leftover Island Batik fabrics from 2017 and 2018. I am going to cut up my older fabrics into easy sizes of squares and rectangles for simple patchwork tops. Right now I am leaning towards 10.5" squares and 10.5" x 5.5" rectangles to start. 10" finished squares will translate simply into 70" x 90" for twin, 80" x 90" for full, and 90" square for queen.

As noted above, both top makers and long arm quilters are desperately needed. Please consider helping in some way!

Finally, Audrey, Karen, Stephanie, and I are plotting and planning for the third round of the Coast to Coast Bee! Here are my quilt tops from the first two years:

I am trying to figure out exactly what I will request for my quilt. My two thoughts are another medallion or a big block quilt where each person would make one XL quilt block. We are currently looking for one to two more USA-based intermediate-advanced quilters to join our round robin bee group. Email me (littlebunnyquilts@gmail.com) if you might be interested.

Breezy Blooms {Quilt Top Construction}

While my Coast to Coast Bee quilt from last year still isn't finished (oops!) I spent some time this weekend finishing up the quilt top for this year's C2C bee quilt.

Here are all of the rows together:

Unlike a lot of quilts, I knew how I wanted to finish this quilt when I decided on what I wanted to request from my bee mates. The rows would be sashed together with black solid (which is why I requested non-black backgrounds in the blocks from my bee mates) and then the large floral print would be used for the final border.

Drawing from my original post:

I decided on 1.5" strips for my sashing strips.

Not having to worry about a lot of matching between blocks and rows meant that this went from rows and strips to a sashed quilt center in no time at all!

I cut my floral fabric strips from the length of the fabric rather than the width of the fabric so that I could do slightly less piecing for the borders. This print is just so much fun! The quilt is now approximately 65" x 75", a big chunky throw.

Now the quilt top is done and now I have to start figuring how backing and how to quilt this one! Black thread? Pink thread? White thread? Decisions, decisions!

Don't forget to keep up with the Island Batik Great Outdoors blog hop! I'll be posting selected links to my fellow ambassadors' blog posts (especially those with giveaways!) each week. Make sure to check out a fun quilt and giveaway from Patterns by Jen and one from Powered by Quilting, too!

Sharing at Let's Bee Social and Needle and Thread Thursday!

Coast to Coast Bee 2.0 {Stephanie's Quilt}

This post marks the end of another year of the Coast to Coast Traveling Bee (C2C Bee, for short!)

The last quilt I worked on was for Stephanie of Quilt 'n Party! Stephanie and I had been in the same hive in the Stash Bee at least once and she was also an Island Batik Ambassador last year.

Her quilt is a nature and outdoor themed quilt. In consulting with her, we decided to balance out the already added blocks featuring flowers, butterflies, and trees with some classic quilt blocks.

Here's her quilt with all of the additions from our other friends:

I pulled fabrics in the colors that are already featured in this quilt to make bear paw blocks and pinwheel blocks in various sizes.

My row of bear paw blocks was added to the bottom and was 9.5" tall and my row of pinwheel blocks was added to the top and was 6.5" tall.

Her quilt is now on its way back to Colorado for Stephanie to finish as she desires!

I also received my quilt, or rather, rows of quilt blocks, back from its trip across the country! Here's what the collection of rows currently look like:

From top to bottom the rows are from, respectively, Chelsea, Audrey, Karen, Karen, Stephanie and my original row at the bottom. I am still planning to stick to my original plan which was to sash these individual rows together with solid black fabric and then use the large scale floral print as the borders.

I may or may not add a 4" block row or two, but it might actually be totally fine with just the rows that my bee mates have sent to me. I was hoping for a throw size with this one, and I think that has been accomplished!

Sharing at Main Crush Monday and Linky Tuesday!

Coast to Coast Bee 2.0 {Karen's Quilt}

For this round of the Coast to Coast Traveling Bee, I worked on Karen's quilt. Here's what Audrey sent to me:

Karen created the Storm at Sea center, Chelsea added the checkerboard corners, and Audrey added the striped corner sections.

I decided that I wanted to add a border around what Audrey added instead of another set of corner sections to turn the quilt top on point. I settled on adding a diamond chain border around the quilt, with the same sized colored squares that Chelsea used in her checkerboard sections. I found a great cream print with white feathers to use as my background at my LQS while my mom was in town visiting.

Getting the side sections together was very quick and I was able to cut each section to about 5.5 inches wide. I used one of the purple fabrics for squares in the corners.

Here's a close up I used as a teaser on Instagram, which shows the low volume feather print quite well!

Now this top is on its way to Stephanie to work on and I'll be receiving Stephanie's quilt for our last round of quilts this year! My quilt (or rather, my rows) will be coming back to me sometime in July!

Sharing at Needle and Thread Thursday and Oh Scrap!

Coast to Coast Bee 2.0 {Chelsea's Quilt}

This round of the Coast to Coast traveling bee had me working on Chelsea's outdoor themed quilt. Here's what I received to work on:

Audrey added the border and paper pieced New Hampshire lettering and the modern mountains was Chelsea's start to the quilt. Doesn't it look like an old fashioned travel ad?

Since this quilt had a lot of paper piecing already, I decided to continue that theme. It was easy to find "NH facts" which told me all about the state bird, butterfly, insect, flower, and so on and so forth. After looking at paper piecing patterns online, I decided to add blocks of the state butterfly -- the Karner Blue butterfly -- and the state insect -- the ladybug!

First, I worked on the butterflies. This type of butterfly is mainly royal blue and black with yellow accents. I omitted the yellow accents, but found this awesome marble print in my scraps that looks awesome for the butterfly wings!

Next, I made two ladybugs. I didn't have polka dot fabric, so I used a paisley print.

My final addition was a block of New Hampshire itself! I used an outline of the state that I found online and traced it onto my fusible backwards. I picked a green leaf Amanda Murphy print as the fabric for the applique. I used a slightly darker shade of green thread to blanket stitch around the edges of the applique state.

Here's what I'll be passing along to Stephanie! I'm so happy with how it came together.

My next assignment is working on Karen's quilt! Her quilt is a medallion quilt. Sharing at Let's Bee social this week!

I'm also excited to share that I am a part of the upcoming Stash Statement blog hop to celebrate Kelly's first book!

Photo courtesy Martingale/That Patchwork Place

The hop has new posts once a week on Mondays! It's a great lineup of quilters taking part.

Stash Statement Blog Tour Schedule-

4/16- Grand Bazaar    Shelley @ Cora's Quilts

                                    Connie @ Freemotion by the River

4/23- Louvered  Lindsey @ Primrose Cottage Quilts 

                           Diann @ Little Penguin Quilts

4/30- Precarious  Jess @ Quilty Habit                       

                             Myra @ Busy Hands Quilts

                                                            

5/7- Beach Retreat  Sarah @ Sarah Goer Quilts                               

                                 Liz @ Savor Every Stitch 

                                                           

5/14- Fire Pit   Alison @ Little Bunny Quilts <---- That's me!                  

                         Preeti @ Sew Preeti Quilts

                                                            

5/21- Detour    Laura @ Slice of Pi Quilts                         

                         Shelley @ The Carpenter's Daughter Who Quilts

                                                            

5/28- Murrina    Yvonne @ Quilting Jetgirl             

                            Leanne @ Devoted Quilter

                                                            

6/4- Scattered    Jayne @ Twiggy and Opal                      

                           Christine @ Triangles and Squares 

                                                            

6/11- Bloom Chicka Boom   Chris @ made by ChrissieD            

                                               Michelle @ From Bolt to Beauty

                                                            

6/18- Regatta   Susan @ Quilt Fabrication                             

                          Debbie @ A Quilter's Table    

                          Christa @ Christa Quilts

                                                            

6/25- Catch a Falling Star  Cynthia @ Quilting is More Fun Than Housework        

                                              Anja @ Anja Quilts

                                                            

7/2- College Prep   Hilary @ by Hilary Jordan                 

                                Lori @ Crossquilt

                                                            

7/9- Take Flight (bonus digital pattern)  Kelli @ Seriously, I Think It Needs Stitches 

                                                                 Paula @ The Sassy Quilter

Coast to Coast Bee 2.0 {Audrey's Quilt}

This year for the Coast to Coast Traveling Bee (C2C Bee) I am working on Audrey's quilt first. This year we're rotating our quilts "backwards" from last year -- last year I had Audrey's quilt last!

This year Audrey's quilt theme is "flight" and her color palette is "rich rainbow". You can read about her quilt inspiration here. Here's what I received from Audrey:

While flying geese were easily the first thing that popped into my head, I also thought of pinwheels! My initial thought was to add on-point pinwheels on each side and then larger blocks on the top and bottom. Originally I had planned to add six smaller pinwheels on each side, but decided to put three on each side instead.

After consulting with Audrey, I decided that the next addition should be some staggered arrow blocks (pattern from Quiet Play). I made six arrows -- one in each color -- with a grey/black shaft for each one. Here's the tentative layout I sent to Audrey once I had five of the six arrows done:

I used some of the Art Gallery Fabrics that I used for an upcoming secret sewing project to sash together the arrows to the centerpiece. I absolutely love those metallic dots!

This quilt really grew! It started off as about 17 inches square and now it's approximately 26 inches wide and 35 inches long! This quilt will be sent off to Stephanie of Quilt'n Party this weekend! Stephanie had my quilt this round and she added a row of bright log cabin blocks!

Don't forget to join our Blocked Rainbow QAL starting March 19th! Join the Facebook Group for chat, hints, and laughs!

Sharing at Finished or Not Friday, Oh Scrap, and Linky Tuesday!

Coast to Coast Bee Round 2 {Starting My Quilt}

Because we had SO much fun last year, most of our Coast to Coast (C2C) Bee have returned for another year! Just a reminder of my quilt top from 2017, which I still need to finish!

My quilty friends this year are:
Audrey (Hot Pink Quilts)
Chelsea (Patch the Giraffe)
Stephanie (Quilt 'N Party)
Karen (who is mysterious!)

Last year I loved starting with a fabric line and letting my cohorts add in other fabrics as they choose. I picked through my sets of coordinating fabric and found a set of two charm packs and some yardage of an older line from Benartex, Breezy Blooms. I believe my mom bought this for me when she was on a shop hop. Here's a sampling of the fabrics:

I also have a few bright solid fat quarters in pink, orange, yellow, and green, and a VERY large chunk of the black floral in the top row of the picture. I saved part of it for myself to potentially use as borders for the quilt.

This year instead of a medallion, I am requesting a row of blocks 48" long from my friends for a row quilt. They can make their rows any height -- 48" long works well with a variety of block sizes! I drew a picture of my "vision" quilt in my notebook that travels with the quilt.

I requested either white or bright solids (I sent some with my fabrics) be used as the background in each row. My plan is to sash the rows together with black solid and then to use the rest of my large floral print as a border. It's VERY modern traditional, and perfectly me!

For my starter row, I chose to make a row of four 12" finished blocks. I used the Folded Corners block pattern. I used a pink solid background for my blocks and made each block in a different color.

My quilt has been mailed off to Stephanie, and I have Audrey's quilt starter to work on this month! Here's what it looks like thus far:

Her theme is "flight" so my initial thoughts are pinwheels and flying geese!

Have a wonderful Monday! I'm going to stay in my Scottie Dog pajamas for as long as I possibly can today.

Sharing at Linky Tuesday!