Bunny Hill Designs and Japanese woven quilts

Hello there! Now that the postie has arrived in Christchurch at Maree's house with her two quilts I can have a show and tell!
Facebook followers will have seen the sneak peeks of both these beautiful quilts.Without further or do.....................

"Merry Merry Snowmen" by Bunny Hill. Needleturn applique, piecing and a small amount of stitchery (with eyes & other embellishments to follow) makes for a fabulous fun quilt for Christmas!

Maree had her usual request: " I trust you and love your quilting style so go for it!" Well if that's not permission to play I don't know what is! So after the hard yards of stitching in ALL the ditches and around the applique shapes, it was time to play.

You may see the faint pencil lines, these are where Maree with do some added stitchery. I did use the line of the 'slope' to divide the two areas into 'a snow slope' and a background sky.

                                  Awesome fun, going down a snow slope in a teacup!

Maree chose Warm & Natural cotton batting and I used the following threads: "so fine" by Superior Threads, YLI, perma-core and my nice fine thread for ditch stitching.

The swag border helps create a theatrical framing for a fabulous quilt.
Even Maree's choice of backing has a sense of fun about it...................................

The next quilt Maree had me custom quilt was "Taupe Flower Garden" that Maree bought some years back as a Block of the Month from Patchwork Passion. Robyn the owner of Patchwork Passion tells me this is no longer available as a BOM, but they have similar patterns available.

Once again Maree gave me free range, however I was aware that this was to be a bed quilt.

I was keen to keep this quilt looking classic, so cross-hatching the background of the flower blocks seemed like a good choice, but I wanted a japanese type feel, I think the the twin lines creates this vibe.
I added light detailing to the applique.

Maree chose Matilda's Own wool batting for extra warm and loft, I used the same thread brands as Merry Merry Snowmen except different colours.

For the pieced blocks I kept things simple, there is of course ditch stitching, it really does help your piecing shine.

The scrappy pieced blocks I did stipple, not exciting I know, but it really seemed like the right 'fit' for this quilt.

Sashings and corner stones.........................................

The borders are my FAVOURITE! When I saw these borders on Kathy's blog some months back I filed the idea away, all the while quietly waiting for the right quilt.

I will be honest and say I did have a booboo and had to do some unpicking, it was a combination of things, first time trying this design, so it's not built up in my muscle memory like many designs and I had applique on the borders to maneuver around. It was all worth it as this design frames this quilt perfectly! Thank you Kathy.

Thank you so much Maree for producing well made quilts and for letting me have creative freedom!