This month Island Batik allowed the ambassadors a project of their choice, using any of the fabrics we received in our January boxes except the Surprise package which will be used in the May Blog Hop. Our projects could be any size and made using any technique.

I’ve had my eye on this fun 2-1/2″ strip pack, Cosmic by Jackie Kunkel of Canton Village Quilt Works for Island Batik. This collection is so bright and colorful. I just love it!

While thinking about what I could make with this strip set, I thought about the Rolling Stone block and how this would work perfectly for it. I was even able to cut my half-square triangles (HSTs) with my AccuQuilt die and strip sewing to make a 12″ block. With the Rolling Stone block in mind, my next thought was a garden theme and with Easter just around the corner next month, I thought about some of my digitized embroideries that would carry the theme. I used three of my Vintage Colorline Bunnies set and three of my Colorlace Floral quilt blocks along with six Rolling Stone pieced blocks to make this quilt.

I not only used the strip set for the blocks, but I also used it for the sashing and borders, as well as the binding. If you like your binding 2-1/2″, strip sets make fantastic no cut binding?!! I chose a few strips for the binding and stitched them together, then used my handy new tool (that I really like) to put a crisp crease in the binding. It’s called the Magic Binding Maker. This was the first time I tried it and I really like how it worked. Aren’t new toys fun?!!

And here is my project for this month!

I had a lot of fun quilting this one! Last fall I took a class with Karlee Porter and it was fun to try out some of the motifs I learned. They are certainly not as wonderful as Karlee’s but I feel I will get better with more practice. This quilt was just not suited for an all over edge to edge motif, in my humble opinion.

Quilt Stats

The quilt was made with Island Batik Cosmic Strip Pack and solid white, pieced with Aurifil 50 wt thread, which is my go-to for piecing, along with a Schmetz 80/12 Microtex needle. Pressing was done with my Oliso Mini Pro Iron, which I absolutely love! It was quilted on Ms. Mattie (my HQ Avante) using Hobbs Thermore batting. I really enjoy quilting with this batting. There is hardly any lint and is very light weight, which is perfect for a wall quilt. The quilt measures approximately 44 x 60 inches.

I wish to thank Island Batik, Aurifil, Schmetz Needles, Hobbs Batting, and Oliso for supplying the materials used in making Bunnies in the Garden. If you love Cosmic, you can find strip sets and 10″ stacks at Hancock’s of Paducah, and yardage should be shipping to stores very soon.

I hope you like Bunnies in the Garden and I hope you will visit my fellow ambassadors and check out what they have made this month!

Until next time…