Bounding bunnies and carrots

For the last orange week of April, I thought I would serve carrots. However, I made these for last year's Rainbow Challenge bounding bunny quilt.

I have finally gotten all the bounding bunnies rounded up and sewn them together with a two inch sashing. The carrots will go in the middle.

I am showing a photoshop compilation of what the bunnies and carrots will look like when sewn together because Molly was not letting me use the design wall. (And Typhoon is only an innocent bystander, or I should say gawker.) I will sew the final last two seams when cats are sleeping and my nerves are less frayed.

Meanwhile, I suggest you visit the other participants in the Rainbow Scrappy Challenge and see what they are serving up for the fifth and final week of orange.

Quilting and Storms

Here are some more Dear Jane blocks: J9 or Maury High School, E2 or Merry May, and K12 or Doris's Dilemma.

I'm also slowly sewing the right side of the bounding bunny quilt together. I already have the left side of the quilt sewn together (the right facing bunnies). They will have a column of carrots in the middle. I also am continuing to bind and hand quilt the plaid bunny quilt. And if that isn't enough, a real bunny is hanging out in the garden again this year.

Molly would like to express her disapproval of those of you who supported Typhoon's ambitions to become a lap cat. Molly would like to remind you that as warden of Kitten Korrections she cannot condone molly-coddling criminal kittens like Typhoon and that only kittens named Molly should be coddled. To emphasize Typhoon's criminal past, she is renaming him Crimey McCrimeface.

Meanwhile, we have been having waves of thunderstorms and Molly is the first cat I've known that goes to look out a window during a thunderstorm. She says no kitten from Team Storm named Hurricane, Cyclone, Tornado, Tsunami or Typhoon should be afraid during a thunderstorm. So now Typhoon (AKA Crimey) is joining her at the window so she won't rename him Honey Bunny or Flower.

Dear Jane F10

Here is Dear Jane F10 or Potholder. For this block, I combined machine piecing with English paper piecing. Like applique, I enjoy the final sewing part of EPP, but not the preparation. That said, I prefer the precision I get from EPP compared to the...ahem...folk art quality to my applique. For this block, I machine pieced the outer three strip sections and the corner diamond pieces. This left me with the equivalent of a nine-patch to sew together by hand where EPP is quite friendly to the odd angles.

Meanwhile, Typhoon would like you to know that he has decided to adopt me and to become a professional lap cat. Molly would like you to know that she is officially changing his name to Buddy Fuddyduddy and she liked him better when he bit unsuspecting children.

Plaid bunny progress

Today, Typhoon played in the 1.5 inch strips piled on the floor.

I made binding from various plaids and then began sewing it to the plaid bunny quilt.

Molly went online to see what everyone was doing over at Oh Scrap!

Orange bunnies and stars

Although the plaid bunny quilt is under the quilting needle, I am also making standing bunnies for the Rainbow Scrappy Challenge. The bunnies are all ready to hop over to Angela's SoScrappy blog to see what everyone else is making.

Not realizing that there is still another week of orange, I made some twinkler stars. But now I know why Molly upended the container and spread the star parts across the floor.

Dear Jane K5

Here's Dear Jane block K5 or Passing Through. I chose to machine piece this block, but poor Jane Stickle is now probably suffering from grave rotational dyspepsia. First, I sewed the dark and light strips together, but cut them at an angle to get the diamonds...generating much waste in the process. Then after sewing the skewed four patch, I bordered it with the light fabric. I then wastefully cut away the excess to get the required 2.75 inch squares. However, I'm pretty sure that less than a yard of fabric was used to make this 5 inch block.

Dear Jane and Bunny Quilting

Here are Dear Jane blocks E10 (Five and Dime) and M5 (Mother's Point). I made the Five and Dime block quite a while ago when I was trying out applique. Or I may have made it by accident. In any case, when I saw it in Fabadashery's draw, I confirmed that I had already made it. Otherwise, it would have waited because I am saving hand sewing for quilting the bunny quilt.

 

In addition to the amorphous blob surrounding each bunny, I've decided to quilt a circle around each eye and to quilt a lozenge shape on each ear and arm. 

Typhoon thinks that amorphous blobs are interesting AND fashionable. And speaking of Typhoon. I have not settled on his final name and switch off between Typhoon and Buddy.  Maybe I should also consider Catty McCatface.

Dear Jane Block A13 and EPP

It was bound to happen...I finally succumbed to English Paper Piecing (EPP). This is Dear Jane Block A13 or Starlight Star Bright. I ventured over to the blog "That Quilt" who generously offers up creative solutions for piecing the Dear Jane blocks. Although the blog heavily features paper piecing, I often enjoy seeing the solutions provided there. But for this block, there was paper piecing and applique and despair. Yet this block does not have particularly tiny pieces. Because I had already been assured that EPP would be a breeze, I decided to give it a go.

And oddly, once I had the pieces prepped, sewing the block together was quite wonderful. And the accuracy on the front is amazing. (The chaos on the back suggests severe motor coordination issues, however).

I also revised Dear Jane block B10 or Jud's Trophy. I wanted to provide a empty square in the middle to open the block up and show off the square theme of the block. But I had mistakenly given the block a light border which took away the square effect. Cue the seam ripper.

This was the earlier version of the block.

Dear Jane Block G6

This is Dear Jane Block G6 or Papa's Star. In the original Jane Stickle quilt, this star seems oversized and is placed at a odd slant. In the book, this block is straightened...both the center star and its outer perimeter. I decided to go for the original version...resizing it to fit in the finished 4.5 inch square and following the photo image of Jane Stickle's quilt...which it turns out does not have an equal sided hexagon and matching triangles. So I approached this more like enlarging a drawing. Also, I pieced the center star and machine stitched the triangles to the hexagon. After that, I appliqued the star to the background adding some of my own jaunty misshapen bits.

Dear Jane and Quilting

This is Dear Jane block C8 or Hani's Crown. I did use paper piecing for the middle triangles--the blue kite shapes with triangles on either side.

I also began hand quilting the plaid bunnies quilt. You might be able to see the rounded full figure bunny surrounding the plaid patchwork bunny. Given the variation in fabric types for the plaids, I wasn't comfortable using a marker (fade away or otherwise), and instead made a fabric bunny template that I pinned over the patchwork and used as my quilting guide. At first, I tried a freezer paper template that I ironed on, but it quickly unpeeled and became unwieldy.

After reading about Suzi's antics over at Fabadashery, Molly thought she should help me by burrowing into the quilt. She was disappointed to learn that Suzi had stolen her tail under the rotary cutter trick.

Orange owl

An orange applique owl flew into my sewing room and wanted to know what other wonderful orange delights might be happening over at the Rainbow Scrappy Challenge.

 He was so excited by what he saw that he invited his friends...or maybe he brought them as decoys for Molly the kitten who attacks patchwork on the design wall.

Plaid bunny quilt layers

I have the first part of the machine quilting finished on the plaid bunny quilt. In this case, I just quilted the main grid over the quilt top and the wool batting. Next I take out the pins and then add the backing layer.

And, of course, my every move was carefully supervised.

And here is a gratuitous photo of Typhoon who looks angelic here, but helped Molly use the layered quilt as a play fort and wrestling castle.

Return to Dear Jane

Enough monkey business! Time to get back to Dear Jane. Here is block A3 or Hunter's Moon.

This is Dear Jane block B10 or Jud's Trophy. In the original quilt, the center cross was all one color. I chose to open up the center to avoid a dark blob.

This is Dear Jane M13 or Lynette's Diamond. Earlier, I promised you that I was not going to get into monkey business for this post...but sometimes it's hard to avoid.

I was taking the photo of block M13 when Molly decided it was time to climb the design wall.

 

Here she is, going up and over to the top of the shelving unit behind the design wall.

And here she is looking back around the wall to assess the damage and remind me how adorable she is.

Bunnies and monkeys

Today I worked on assembling the bounding bunny quilt blocks from last year's Rainbow Scrappy Challenge. I put in double wide sashing to give the bunnies some room to hop, but it also makes it a much bigger quilt.

Molly agreed that the quilt was too big and began to remove some of the bunny panels. If you would like to see other scrap projects without the aggressive criticism, I suggest visiting Scraptastic Tuesday's link party for April.

I also worked a bit on the Monkey design. First, Monkey 0.0 is disappointed that no one sent her a get well card because I had sewn her stomach upside down. The Monkey in the center is Monkey 0.0 after her stomach re-topsy turvey surgery. She looks better already.

The monkey on the right shows some of the cosmetic options we discussed such as lowering her eyelids to reduce the crazed look as shown by the monkey on the right. By continuing to use polka dot fabric for the eyes, future monkeys can look sideways, up, down and center.

Next I adjusted the nose to give the monkey larger cheeks while preserving a little bit of smile to avoid the grumpy monkey look.

I think I'll go back to the legs of Monkey 1.0 and make some adjustments to the tail which looks more like an ornament hook than a tail.

Monkey 0.0

This monkey is definitely a step backward from Monkey 1.0. Some of its problems may be due to the fabric choices, but there are structural issues as well. For the eyes, I used a black on white polka dot which changed the expression from mean to caffeinated. I will be going back to the drawing board.

Here are the monkeys side by side. I thought I would give the monkey better legs, but the new monkey just looks like a girl monkey in an old timey dress. On the positive side, new monkey makes me like the first monkey a lot more.

Monkey 1.0 revisited

I was looking at the monkey today and asked myself the obvious question...Where did his tail go?

I had made the tail and top of the head first and then made the rest of the monkey. I have no idea how I then made a new top of the head and forgot about the tail. In any case, we now know why Monkey is blowing his top. I've mapped out a new version of the monkey that I hope will appear a bit friendlier and happier. So this one will just have to retire after a short period of being an experimental monkey.

Meanwhile, Molly is trying out new dorm rooms for Kitten U in case I decide to foster kittens again this year. She first devised this cat organization solution when she received a notice from the shelter saying that they were looking for fosters or adopters and donations because 36 cats were brought in from a hoarding situation.

Orange fish

Here's an orange fish to join the other rainbow fish for the Rainbow Scrappy Challenge.

But another orange fish decided to come along for a swim. To see other wonderful orange scrappiness, follow the current to the Rainbow Scrappy Challenge links.

I laid out the bounding bunnies from last year's challenge but apparently there was a rather vicious art critic in the sewing room last night. Molly denies that she or Typhoon had anything to do with this.

Uh oh!

Bounding bunny reunion

I laid the bounding bunnies out on the floor and discovered I had an extra left bounding bunny and was missing a right bounding bunny. Obviously, one of them switched sides. So I made another pink bounding bunny.

And here are the bounding bunnies laid out on the floor. Each bunny finishes at 6 by 6.75 inches and the carrots finish at 6 inches square. And for now I'm planning on using 1.25 inch sashing, although I should probably think about the borders sooner rather than later.

And Molly says she has it on good authority that if I want people to look at my bunny blocks, I should make it interesting.

Molly's rebuttal

Hi there! It's Molly the kitten guest blogger. I have to offer a rebuttal to yesterday's post because it was written by a psychopath.

For example, this is what the psychopath made yesterday. It's a 1.5 inch star that will be embedded within a five-point star for a Dear Jane psychopath quilt. Time making this star is not time spent doting on adorable kittens.

My brother says that there are worse places to live but I think he makes weird scary places up in his head. And I don't believe for a minute that he bit someone and was put in solitary for ten days.

The psychopath has been hiding all of the interesting toys, but yesterday I noticed this drawer was left open. I tried to look nonchalant and was walking out of the room when the psychopath pinned me to the floor, pun intended. The psychopath then took the pin out of my mouth. And I only took one!

I do understand why you would come to this blog to see adorable kitten pictures, but please ignore false accusations about those kittens!