Brutal Honesty {October 2018}

How is it October already? Summer zoomed by and September was gone in the blink of an eye!

My goals for September were to finish my September Island Batik project, which I did, and to start quilting my Magnolia Mystery quilt, which I did not start yet. I really had a slow month on the quilting front so there's not a lot of progress here.

Quilting in progress/taken to be long arm quilted:
1. Blocked Rainbow Quilt -- Being long arm quilted, return date TBD
2. Donuts quilt -- My mom is going to quilt this on her mid-arm, return date TBD

Completed tops:
3. Magnolia Mystery QAL -- I wasn't sure what color grey thread to use to do the quilting and needed to stock up on thread anyways, I ordered this pack of thread (not an affiliate link) which has three different colors of grey. I think I'll end up using the darkest one, but have the medium shade just in case that one is too dark. I still need to get batting for this one too.
4. Breezy Blooms C2C Bee -- No progress

Tops partially finished:
5. Double Delight -- No progress
6. Drift Away Scrap Quilt -- No progress
7. Bonnie and Camille C2C Bee Quilt -- No progress
8. Romantic Garden Quilt -- No progress
9. Monthly Wall Hangings -- No progress
10. Pineapple Stash Bee Blocks -- No progress

Just blocks and units:
11. Sew Kitschy Blocks -- No progress
12. Cubicle Quilts -- No progress
13. Happy Houses blocks -- No progress
14. Birthstone blocks -- No progress
15. Radiant Jewel Quilt -- I finished all of the diamond blocks and have started on my star blocks.

Quilt alongs and long term projects:
16. Monthly Island Batik Ambassador projects -- Our September theme was Starstruck and I made a baby sized version of my Twinkle quilt! I am making progress on my all blue version of Christine's Kitchen and will be showing that off this month!

17. The Border Quilt QAL: The first two installments of the QAL happened in September! I now have a quilt center with a bunch of borders. I'm hoping that I have enough fabric pulled for at least one and hopefully two more rounds around the quilt. The next round is sawtooth stars and I have started on that.

New projects: NONE! (Yet! I ordered fabrics for two baby quilts that I need to try to finish this month.)

The rest of the year will be focused on finishes and getting some of these quilts out of bins, baskets, and piles and into loving homes elsewhere. My husband and I are in the process of looking for our first home (!!!) and I'd rather not move all of the quilts currently in our possession.

If you or someone you love is interested in purchasing a quilt that you've seen on Little Bunny Quilts, please email me (littlebunnyquilts@gmail.com) because I am willing to part with many of the quilts I have made in the last two years. It is not cost-effective for me to list everything that I'm willing to sell on Etsy with their current listing fee structure. Click on the "Finished Quilts" tab above to see finished items. At this time I am only accepting baby quilt commissions on a limited basis.

Radiant Jewel {Four Patch Piles}

I've had a little bit of a short attention span this week, so I've been working on the various units that make up the star blocks in my Radiant Jewel quilt.

All of my flying geese units are pressed and trimmed.

For the center of the blocks, the directions tell you to make randomly patched four-patches out of 2.5" squares. I decided that I would strip piece mine using one of the black prints and the cream/gold print.

I also set aside the 2.5" squares I'll need for the border units.

I also started working on the very, very many small four patches that are in the star blocks and the border units. The quilt requires 172 of these four patches that will finish at 2" in the quilt!

While I still need to make about 100 more of these tiny four patches, I laid out my first star block to see what it will look like. The vast majority of the tiny four patches are used in the pieced border.

This has been a good project to work on this week since it's so fun and the fabrics are so beautiful. This weekend I need to get myself in gear to finish at least something or work on something with a real deadline rather than just fun things for myself.

The Border Quilt QAL {Checkerboard Rings}

I've managed to add on a few more rounds of rounds to my Border Quilt! Check out all about the quilt along on the Patterns by Jen blog!

For this section of the quilt, we added alternating checkerboard borders and background borders. You can see my first post about the quilt center here.

For my first checkerboard border, I decided to go with red and light green. The red dot is a fabric that I used for the binding of one of my Little Firecracker quilts and the green is left over from my Little Bunny Placemats and I also used it in my Magnolia mystery quilt.

For my second checkerboard, I went with my paisley print and dark green. Both of these fabrics are ones that have just been hanging around in my stash for a while.

The next round will be sawtooth stars! I'm hoping I have enough fabric to at least get through adding all of the sawtooth stars and then a final background border.

Check out some of the other versions of the quilt by some great bloggers!
Stephanie @ Quilt'n'Party
Daphne Greig
Becca @ Pretty Piney
Kate @ Seams Like A Dream
Vicki @ My Creative Corner

Radiant Jewel {Diamond Blocks}

While I showed a little peak of my Radiant Jewel quilt beginnings in my retreat post, I didn't share a lot about my plans for this quilt.

The quilt has two main blocks -- the diamond blocks that I started on retreat and star blocks. While on retreat I was able to finish 11 of the 17 diamond blocks needed for the quilt and I started the HSTs and flying geese for blocks #12 and #13.

This weekend was the first time working on this project since retreat and I quickly finished the last of the diamond blocks.

I'm very happy with my blocks and as you might be able to tell in this picture, I picked the largest scale prints for the diamond blocks. This quilt is all based around working from one jelly roll and one charm pack so all of the flying geese and HSTs for the diamond units are made with the stitch-and-flip method. If I were to make this quilt again, I wouldn't make these blocks using this method and would find a more fabric efficient way to make the blocks.

However, I did decide to ignore the directions to make the flying geese for the star blocks using the solid fabrics since I had continuous yardages of these fabrics instead of precuts. I have 72 all-solid flying geese to make for my 18 star blocks -- I'll have 6 stars in each of the three jewel tones.

My original hope was that I would be able to have enough leftover fabric from the quilt to make extra blocks to enlarge the quilt. However, when the kit and directions say to "cut carefully, there's almost no extra!" that's probably not a possibility! Part of this is how inefficient some of the cutting is -- one of the next steps is cutting down some of my 2.5" strips into 1.5" strips to make smaller four patches -- that much waste is a killer! Add that in with all of the stitch and flip units, and my heart aches.

Happy Monday -- I hope you get to do some sewing today!

Sharing at Linky Tuesday and Let's Bee Social!

Jewel Box Star Table Runner {Finished Scrap Project}

This post could also be titled "I am bad at leaders and enders."

I absolutely LOVE the idea of leaders and enders -- a side project that you have going in an effort to save thread and use scraps. Bonnie Hunter is a leader and ender pioneer and I decided that I wanted to join in on her "leader and ender challenge" for this year making Jewel Box Star blocks.

Instead of pure scrappy-ness, I decided to do a controlled scrappy color scheme for my blocks. I picked out reds and greens for my four patches and a fat quarter of an old Basic Grey floral print for my half square triangles. Four blocks later:

As you can see, I arranged my four patches so that one diagonal of the block has green squares and one diagonal has red squares. All of my HSTs use the same blue background floral.

But backing up -- I am not good at leaders and enders. Instead of what you're actually supposed to do with leaders and enders, I tend to just use it as a "filler" project when I have a few minutes here and there to sew. I guess maybe this is just what works for my brain and my tiny sewing space.

I decided that instead of working on more blocks to add to a quilt, I would just turn these four blocks into a long and skinny table runner. I also had this great zig zag print hanging out in my stash that I chose for the backing and binding.

I did have to piece the backing since this table runner is 48" long. I used my tutorial for matching prints to make the necessary seam a little less obvious. I also was able to use the batting scraps left over from my Pansy Garden quilt.

For the quilting, I did more swirly flowers in white Aurifil thread. I used the leftover fabric from the backing (I had a whole yard of this fabric) for the binding. Because the runner is 48" x 12", I needed four WOF strips for the binding -- three strips was *just* too short. I top stitched the binding with a dark green Aurifil thread that is similar to the darker green in the zig zag print.

Here's a close up of one block in the table runner -- the binding and backing fabric is a perfect pair with my navy floral print star points.

And just for fun -- lots of stripey goodness when I rolled up the runner.

Happy Friday! Sharing at Brag about your Beauties and Finish it up Friday!

Project Stats:
Name: Jewel Box Star Table Runner
Pattern: Jewel Box Star from Bonnie Hunter/Quiltville
Size: 12" blocks, runner is 48" by 12"
Fabrics: scraps and stash
Quilting: swirly flowers in white Aurifil
Future: Might be a gift, might not, haven't decided!