When I got issue 82 of the Sew Magazine in the post, I could not help myself not to try to make a few pillow cases using the Block of the Month  tutorial in the magazine.

As I am not big on quilting, I usually don’t tend to pay attention to this section of the magazine, but the Bunny Block just caught my attention. 

I decided to make four pillowcases three of them as gifts. In Romania, at Easter the tradition is that the Easter Bunny gives small presents to good children (another occasion to treat each other). So, I thought that I can give some away as gifts as I don’t necessarily want my house flooded by Bunny pillow cases through the year. They  are cute at Easter and that’s it. At least that’s the case for me.

I made my pillowcases with muslin fabric and left over scrap fabric laying in my stash. For the eyes and mouth there are online templates that can be downloaded. However I did not bother with that and randomly cut mine directly from felt. Gives the Bunnies more character I think. It did not take me long to make it. But I hated the part where I needed to  get all the little pieces cut. This is the part I don’t like about quilting: cutting all those pieces. Sewing the pieces as a piece of cake. That’s the fastest bit of quilting. I roughly followed the instructions in the magazine.  Because I did not pay attention and I messed up my pillow case. I put the bunny’s ears in wrong. Then I tried to correct it before I added the wadding, but took out the wrong square and ended up with this mess. What does it look like  to you? I think maybe a funny boat?

And this was only the beginning. I skipped past the part where you are told that for the back  once is to cut 33cm wide rectangles and I cut them 30cm wide. Dah! I wondered why, once I added the back to the pillowcase it looked like a rectangle not a square. The simplest of projects and I mess it up! But I was relived as it was the one I was making for myself, the test version anyway. I was afraid I will not have enough fabric left to the the back panels. This is because I decided to be efficient and cut them for all four pillows wrong size(frizzy hair and all). I managed to get another three sets, but just barely.

Next are a few details of the construction. I made the eyes out of felt free hand cut and then topstitched in place. For the whiskers, I randomly drew three lines 10cm long with heat disappearing ink pens before topstitching. I even changed threads for the mouth.  I kind of forgot there is no seam allowance and the edge will be on show and I drew one with a black pen. Ups!Once the face block was done the instructions call for quilting around the bunny’s face, but I decided to quilt around the created square as well to hold everything in place.  The instructions call for envelope style opening. For this I used a left over bed sheet I used to make pillowcases for a duvet set I already had. Basic straight lines and hems. Although I like these little pillowcases and I messed my own, right now I cannot be bothered to go again through my scrap fabric stash to try to find the perfect fabric to make some more. I think its a perfect little project to try your hand at quilting. Its small enough not to be overwhelmed and comes together pretty fast.