Rabbit Transit

Done! I could have sworn this quilt grew two extra sides when I was binding it--it took FOREVER and it's not that large!

I know--it's not that great a photo of the whole quilt, and I'll take a better one once I get a sleeve on it and hang it with the Easter decorations, but that will probably take another week, and I was just too excited to wait that long before I showed you.

The quilting was fairly simple--I just did some back and forth wavy lines in the background, which always kind of represents the outdoors and air movement to me. Then I did some quilting in the appliqued pieces to add a little detail. A friend asked me what I did to make the balloons puffy, and it's really just the absence of any quilting in those parts that makes them stand out a little bit. It's the same with the animal bodies, although I did outline quilt the arms, legs, ears, etc.

The quilting that I really had fun with and ended up liking quite a bit was the quilting in the scalloped border. I really don't like marking quilts much and I hate marking stencils, but I thought the scallops needed something along those lines, so I just drew lines to divide each scallop into sections. First I found the center and drew a line; then I drew lines from the center to the lowest points of the "V" between each scallop, and finally I drew lines in the centers of those larger spaces.

After that, I just quilted the loops like I would feathers, trying to stay somewhat even, and then traveling along the edge of the inner border to quilt the next scallop. Wouldn't it be fun to use that in something that looked like oranges?

Thanks again to Miss Jean for a great quilt name! My only regret right now is that there wasn't room in the borders to applique in the name. Wouldn't that have been terrific?!