Bunnies in The Garden Quilt Tutorial | Springtime Easter Quilt Tutorial 🌷

Welcome to Americana Quilting! In today’s video, we’re excited to share our latest creation: Bunnies in the Garden — a whimsical spring quilt perfect for Easter decorating! 🌸🧵

This delightful quilt features an adorable mix of bunnies and bright orange carrots, all playfully arranged to create a cheerful garden scene. With soft pastel fabrics and charming details, it’s the perfect project to bring a little spring sunshine into your home.

Whether you’re an experienced quilter or just hopping in, this quilt is fun to piece and full of personality. 🐇🥕 We’ll walk you through the layout, share our fabric choices, and give tips to make your own version bloom beautifully!

Pattern: https://www.americanaquilting.com/product-page/bunnies-in-the-garden
Website: https://www.americanaquilting.com/

Hi everyone. I’m Micheline from Americana Long Arm Quilting. We do custom quilting and long arming and you can find a link to our website in the description below. Got a little bit of a different video coming at you today because I’ve already done the quilt. It’s not completely finished yet. This is just the top or a flimsy or a flopsy. that goes well with the fact that there’s bunnies all over it. Um, this is such a cute little spring Eastery kind of quilt that I did want to get this done for you. But, you know, there are six different bunnies in this and they’re all similarly made. So, to make you sit and watch me make all six different bunnies, it just doesn’t make good sense. But, I’m going to show you how to make one bunny. I’m going to show you how to make him. He’s got a a couple of um the more challenging snowballing techniques in his design. So, that’s the bunny that we’re going to create today. I’m going to also show you how to make the three different carrot tops. Um and then we’ll talk about the the strip piecing uh and the snowballing I’ve done for the carrots. And I’ll show you uh a little bit about how I did that one. We’re going to get all that done starting right now. All right, let’s get started. First of all, you don’t have to remember any of these um figures. They’re all going to be on a downloadable PDF on our website. So, you’ll be able to get all the instructions, all the figures, everything that you need to make this. Okay. So, this is again the bunny that we’re talking about. And you see all these little places where the corners are cut around his tail, makes it look like a circle around his ears. It’s all snowballing. I tell you, that’s one of the um uh a quilt designer’s best friends are those snowballs. Okay, now I realize that that does not look anything like the picture that I just showed you, but it’s going to. All right. So, I have drawn diagonal lines uh on everything that I’m going to be snowballing. And we’re going to get to doing that first. Okay. So, oh, and you notice that I’ve got little labels everywhere. This one’s got a lot of pieces. So, I took the time to cut out little pieces of paper, write a letter on them, and when I cut out um uh the piece, I put that label on it. That way, I would remember um where it goes rather than having to go measure it and okay, that piece goes there. All right, let’s start with the um this one right here. This is his nose. All right, let me put some glasses on. get my leader in there. And I’m just going to line up this top snowball right there on the top. And I’m going to sew just to the outside of that line. That way it has some place to turn cuz you know in the turning of your fabric you use up some of the fabric. So, if you sew right on the line, you might not have enough room to turn it uh nicely. So, let’s see how we did. That’s just lovely. Okay, so that’s the top part. Now, let’s do the bottom part. Let’s do his chin. Okay, and this snowball is a little bit smaller. And again, you don’t have to worry about remembering any of these sizes or where any of it goes. Okay. And that one looks good, too. All right. Let’s take it over here to the iron and gently press. Don’t don’t um don’t get anything out of line. Let me get one of my clappers. And I’m just going to set that there while we work on something else. Okay, this piece right here also has a snowball. Let me make sure that my white is on the correct side. And it is. There’s just a whole lot of snowballing going on here. Okay, here we go. I think what I’m going to do is do these snowballs, the little ones that you’ve seen me do and everybody else do a 100 times off camera. But what I am going to do are the ones that are a little less common. Okay. So, let’s start with his ear. Okay. I have a big snowball and a little snowball. So, let’s start with the little snowball. He goes on the bottom right hand corner. And again, just like any other uh snowball, we want to go to the outside of the line just a smidgen. Okay, we are. Let’s check to make sure that’s just right. That’s lovely. Okay. And now this big one is going to go over here on this side. All right, got him placed really nicely. And let’s put him through the machine again. Sewing just to the outside of that line. Okay. And now let’s press those pieces open. I’ve got good coverage on both of them. Now that is going to look like his little ear. Okay. Now the other piece that I want to show you that could be a little bit challenging is his back. Okay. So, I’ve got these two pieces right here. And I’ll be dog on I forgot to draw a line on that. Well, we’ll just do that right now. If I can pick up my ruler. There we go. Okay. So, I’ve got a square of the background color and I have a rectangle of the bunny color. So, you might wonder, how in the heck is that going to work, and I’m going to show you how to do it. Hang on a minute here. What size is that supposed to be? H, I think I might have cut it wrong. Hang on a minute. H and P. H should have been 3 and 1/2 by 4 and 1/2. Let me check my figures here. 1 2 3 and 1/2 by 4 and 1/2. So, this should have been three and 1/2. I don’t think I cut this one right. Let’s see. There’s 4 and 1/2 and 4 and 1/2. I need to cut an inch off of Whoopsies. One side of that. And I can make that happen cuz it’s only supposed to be 3 and 1/2 in. And I had it four and a half. I must have just stopped cutting midway through. That’s close enough. All right. So, there we go. That’s 3 and 1/2 by 4 and 1/2. And I must have done the same thing with this. I made this one four. All right, there we go. Now I have the right the right sizes. So I am going to go I’m going to even those up. And that line runs from this top corner to this bottom corner. But you see there’s a whole other inch down here. That’s okay. Just pretend that that doesn’t that’s not even there. And we’re going to do the same thing. Snowballing this. Go just to the outside of that line. There we go. And there we go. And now that is his back right here. But you see there’s a little um jog right there that is part of his little bottom. So, we needed that little extra space right there. And we’ve got it. All right, let me get all this snowballing done and um we’ll come back and do the next phases of it. All right, I’ve got all my snowballing done. He’s starting to look a little bit more like a bunny. Oh, a lot more like a bunny. And now it’s just a matter of putting all these pieces together. So, let’s start out with his eyeballs. put my little these are the teeny tiny little pieces and I’m going to put the just put them together and run a careful 1/ quarter inch seam. There’s that one. So cute. Okay, let’s do the other side of the eyeball. it. They’re always a little bit fiddly when they’re this side, but it’s not hard. It’s just tiny. Okay, let’s see here. Trim that off. And there’s my little eyeball piece. Let’s give him a little press. I’m going to put the um darker one towards the or I’m going to iron towards the the black. I don’t think it would show through here, but I’m that’s just the way I’m going to do it. Okay. Now, let’s attach him to his nose. So, now these pieces fit just right. Okay. again do that careful quarter inch right [Applause] there. Okay. And now we will attach that piece to the back of his head which goes right here. Get my number out of the way. And we’re going to put this piece right here like so. This is the fun part. This is where you really start to see it coming together after you get all that snowballing done. Okay, let’s press this out. And we’re going to press those seams away from his little eyeball. Okay. Got a little bit of overhang on the bottom there. Let me see. Let me show you that. See, I’ve got a little bit more right there than on the other two sides. And I think I’ll just get rid of him right quick. It was less than an eighth of an inch, so I didn’t mind getting rid of it. Okay, that’s his head. Now, let’s start at the top and let’s sew the what’s above his head to his ear. Okay. And this is where you can get a lot of snowball or um a lot of chain piecing done too. Um rather than just doing one piece at a time. And I’m going to show you how to do that here in just a second. Okay. So that piece goes to the left of his ear. Let’s put these two pieces together. Okay. So I just sewed these two pieces together. Now I’m going to sew these two pieces together. And then I’ll come back up and work on get the right side. And then I’ll come back and finish what goes on the other side of his ear. But as long as I’ve got that under the sewing machine, may as well do a little bit of chain piecing. I’m going to take that off of there. Okay. And we’re going to press that. Just got all kinds of things in my way today. Okay. I’m going to press that away from his ear. Okay. And now I’m going to put this other piece that goes to the other side of his ear on. So this whole top part with his ear will be done. Okay. Now we’ll take his face part and press that and put it back where he belongs. Okay. And I’m going to go ahead and take this off of here and show it to you as well. All right. So, now we’ve got his ear piece done and his head piece done. Now, let’s start working on these pieces here. Okay. So, let’s look work on his little paw right here. Okay, these two little pieces. Find the right sides. Get them sewn together. There we go. Okay. Let’s get that pressed. Okay. And now he is going to get attached to the top part of his little paws. Okay. So, those two are going to go together. All right. [Music] [Applause] Okay, now press that that way. Ouch. Iron’s hot. The iron is hot. Now he should match this piece just perfectly. and he does not. So, I’ve done something wrong there. Oh, I see what I did. I didn’t do anything wrong. He just needs to get uh pieced to that. Let’s piece his body together, shall we? Piece that together. Is that the same? Yeah, I think I know what I did wrong. Okay. You know, it’s uh whenever you’re making one of these patterns up like this, it’s always trial and error. But I think I’ve got all the bugs worked out. But I want you to show I want to show um on these videos that I make mistakes too. And you just keep moving. Just keep moving forward. [Music] Okay. Me press that open. Press that towards his body like so. And then this little guy right here is the end of what we need for him. Get him on there. Okay, that down. Open that up. Now you’ll see with his tail here. Let me turn this around on his tail. Losing letters. I’ve got four pieces snowballed to it. And two of them are the body color and two of them are the background color. So you definitely want the body color ones next to this piece right here. And let’s go ahead and sew that together right now. [Music] We [Music] go. Okay. Got his tail on there. Okay. Now, here is his foot and some background. Put those two pieces [Applause] together. All right. Press that open. Okay. Now, we’ve got some pieces that we can put together here. Now, we are going to put these pieces together, these pieces together, and then we’ll be able to sew this to this. Likewise, we’re going to put this and this together, and then we’ll be able to sew the whole thing apart together. So, let’s do this and this. All right. Do the little ones first. Do his paws first. Okay. like so. We’ll leave that in the machine while we get these two sewn together. That’s his body and his back and his tail. And Okay. Okay. Press these. Press the Let’s see which way I want to press. What? Okay. I think I’ll press that one up. So, this one down. There we go. When I decide on which way to press, it’s which way is the fabric telling me it wants to be pressed. So, there was more going on down here with the little snowballs than going up. I’m pointing at the back of the fabric like you can see that. So, there’s more going on with these snowballs. I’ve got three seams. One right here, here, and here. And on this top piece, I’ve just got these two seams. So, I pressed everything towards the top. That just made more sense. So, since I pressed that one towards the top, I pressed this seam towards the bottom, which they don’t line up. So, it wouldn’t have mattered which way I pressed them anyway. See how those two seams don’t line up. Okay, here’s the this seam where his paw is, and then there’s that seam down there. They don’t line up. So, I didn’t have to worry about which way I pre I pressed them, but I did anyway. I did. Okay, there we go. So, start that in the machine and then come back up here and make sure that it’s all even go. Okay, now I’ll show you his little body. See, this comes together really quickly. Actually, I’m going to press that towards his body again because there’s less seams going that way. And invariably, somebody makes a comment, hey, why didn’t you do it this way or that way? Probably just there’s probably a hundred ways to do this. This is the way I did it. Okay, so there’s his bottom half. We just need to get his head and his ear. So, let’s put those two pieces together. And they’re all going to match now down over here. There we go. Okay. That back in there. We press that. Okay. Going to press that towards his ear for the same reason. There’s um more seams going towards his head than his ear. Oh, this is so cute. This is so cute. Look at that adorable little head. Okay, now we’re put the body and the head together. Here we go. Just watch your seams that they don’t turn over and then they’d be all bulky and [Applause] stuff. Okay. And we’re going to press towards the body. Oh, this turned out so cute. All right, there you go. There’s the bunny. Now, each of the bunnies in the quilt are similarly made to this. Um, their ears might be a little bit different, but again, they’re just simple snowballing pieces. Their faces are all about the same. and their tails are all the same. So, I just did the one bunny. Now, I haven’t encompassed it in a border yet because I waited until I had the entire um all the components done and that way I could figure out how to make them all fit together and then I added the borders to the individual bunnies. So, I’ll show you that kind of at the end. We’ll talk about that. But all those figures are going to be in that PDF. All right, let’s get on to our carrots. Okay, on to our carrots. First of all, all of the carrots are made in a very similar manner. Um, and that’s strip piecing. These are all 2 and 1/2 in widths of different color fabrics. And I just put as many together as I wanted. And then I snowballed the edges. I made the bottoms um a little bit larger snowballs and the tops just two and a half inches on most of them. And you can make them any size that you want. Some of my strip piecing goes this way and some goes this way. So this is just an extra one I had made. I don’t think you need to see me strip piece and snowball anything. So but again directions will be in that PDF. Now let’s make some tops. Okay. So, the first top is the easiest one. We’re going to take uh a 4 and 1/2 piece 4 and 1/2 in by 2 and 1/2 in piece of green and we are going to do a couple of those and I’ve got some lights cut in 2 and 1/2 in squares. I’ve drawn a line diagonally and we are going to make just some simple flying geese units. Okay. like that. And do this one the same. And again, I’m sewing just to the outside of that uh to the outside of the line. Took me a second there. Now, let’s press those. Make sure we’ve got coverage over our corner. Okay. And the reason we’re doing just the one side first is because we’ve got to snowball the or yeah, we’ve got to snowball the other side and we don’t want all that extra in there when we don’t need it. Okay. This one didn’t coming out exactly perfect. Okay. So, I’ve noticed that I’ve still got the coverage I need on the front, but on the back, it’s really crooked, and I I don’t I don’t want to get my flying geese crooked. So, now there’s plenty of coverage on the front and it’s covered on the back properly. And now I’m going to open that up and get rid of that excess fabric. Okay. And I’m going to take it and I’m going to put this flying geese right here. And he crosses over right there. So that’s why we pressed the first flying geese that we did and then trimmed out that excess because this next one does cover um does cross over that one. So we don’t want to have all that bulk in there. So we wanted to trim that out first. Okay. [Applause] Okay, here we go. I’m about to lose that one. Let’s press the other sides of our little flying geese. Okay, those look like they have the perfect amount of coverage. We’re going to go ahead and trim those that excess off and do that to this one. Okay. Now, we’re going to take these two like this and we’re going to put them together. Kind of squished that seam a little bit on the back, but that’s okay. Okay. Now we will press him nicely. Now at this point depending on the carrot that you are using you would let me get this out of the way so I can show you. Depending on the width of the carrot you are sewing him to, you would add that much on either side of him. So, I’d add a piece here and I would add a piece here so he would fit on this carrot. Ain’t that cute? All right, let’s go on to our second type of carrot top. Our second carrot top is basically um star points. Uh so we’re going to start off like this. We’ve got our um solid color here. And we’ve got a dark and a light here and a medium and a light here. And I’ve already made them into half square triangle units so that you can see where I’m going with this. And now this we’re going to make into a flying geese unit just like we did a minute ago with this one. Okay, let’s start with our light. Square that up really [Applause] nice. Okay. Let’s get him on there. Oopsies. He’s not wanting to He was wanting to run away from me. Okay, got him uh turned over nicely. He had full coverage. I’m just going to cut that little piece off. And then we’re going to add our our other star leg. Here we go. [Applause] Okay, press him down and [Music] over and trim out that excess. All right. Now, let’s put him back in here so you can see what we’re doing. Okay, now we’re just going to put those together. And that is a simple matter of just Oops, I didn’t cut these extras out. Let me cut the extra out of this guy. My little half square triangles. I forgot to trim them out. I thought I was getting ahead of myself by doing those off camera and then I forgot to finish them. Okay, so there we go. Now I’m just going to sew this side to this flying geese. Then I’ll sew this one to this rectangle. Okay, let’s get this guy out here and take him back over here and we’re going to sew this piece onto him like so. [Applause] Do the same with him. This one goes this way. Okay. Very fast. Very fast little designs. Okay. All right. Let’s get these pressed open. going to press away from the star legs on this top piece. And I’m going to press towards the center on this bottom piece. That way my seams are going to nest, which is now what we’re going to do. So now I’m going to just pop him right over there. Make sure that’s nesting. I can feel it with my fingers. I’m going to make sure the ends match and that that one is nesting. It [Applause] is. Okay, let’s press him and we’ll preview him on the um little carrot we’ve got. Oh, this is so adorable. Okay, here we go. Getting my carrot set up here. All right. Now, isn’t that cute? Now, you see he’s a little bit wider than this is. Um, but I made all different uh widths of this. But if you wanted to use this piece on this one, um, you would just add some sides to him. Okay. Now, you’ll notice too that on these um two pieces, this one obviously doesn’t match the seams there. And that’s okay. I’m okay with that. I’m also okay with the fact that this one when you sew it in is not going to match exactly the top of the carrot. But that’s a carrot. It the top of the carrot could be uh all over the place. and I don’t think that they ne necessarily need to match. So, I didn’t worry with matching those seams. Okay, let’s go get on to the third and final type of carrot top that I made for this quilt. All right, the third and final uh carrot top that we have starts with the half square triangle. So, I’m going to I’ve I’ve drawn a line down my background fabric. I have it paired with a um medium and I am going to sew on either side of that line quarter inch. Okay. Turn that around and go down the other side. [Music] Okay, now feel free to take that to your cutting table and use your rotary cutter to trim on that line. I am sitting here at my machine and my ironing mat, so I’m just doing it with my scissors. Okay, I’m going to put the dark side uh up. Set those seams. And now I’m going to just carefully roll this back because that is a bias seam and I want it to be straight. Let him sit there for a second. And turn him back too. Okay, now we’re going to get to work on the next step. We’re going to snowball this corn. Oh, first of all, almost did this again. Okay, we need mirror images of each other. Okay. I did that the other day. I did not have mirror images and I was like, I had to cut some more. Okay, so there we go. We’ve got our mirror images started. Now, we’re just going to turn and snowball those corners. That side’s done. Let’s go do this one. Okay. Going to press those and trim out the excess. Okay. Here we go. All right. Got that pressed. I’m gonna trim this out like so. And like so. All right. Now, I’m going to set it up here to make sure that I am pre I am going to be snowballing the correct last corner. Okay. So, I could leave it like that, but for whatever reason, I decided to do one more snowalled corner. Just give it a little bit more interest. And I’m gonna snowball those corners right there. Like that. Okay. All right. That one’s done that way. And I I put I brought that up there and put that there so that I would make sure that I was keeping them in mirror images. Okay, get that over there. Let’s press that one more time and then we’ll cut off the excess. Come on fingers. Okay, let’s trim that away. and trim this away. Oopsies. Trying to take down. Okay. And you can see I didn’t trim down my um my uh piece of green here. That looks pretty even. So now I’m just going to set those on my green, my darker green. All right, that one goes that way. And now I’ll put this one up here. That around [Applause] Okay. All right. We’ll trim off. First of all, let me go over here and press this. And I’m going to press it towards the center, towards the dark green strip. Here we go. And we’ll trim off the top of him. Okay. And let’s preview it with our little carrot there. Oh, so cute. So cute. And you see I didn’t worry again about it not matching the top because carrots have all kinds of different tops and different shapes. Okay, so those are our components. Excuse me. Now, let’s go back over to the wall and I’ll show you talk a little bit more about how I put it all together. Okay. So, let’s take a closer look now at how I put all these different components together. I’ll have Savannah, excuse me, put a photograph of them all up on the wall here, but I didn’t have any of them put together. And you’ll see all the different sizes and it looks kind of funny. So, I had to add pieces uh around the bunnies and around the carrots to get them all to fit together. I started with this column. It was the longest one. So, that’s where I started. And I just made them all the same width, sewed that column together. Moved on to this one. Made them all the same width and sewed that column together. um on the top and the bottom I didn’t add anything until the very end. Um on the sides there I did have to add some pieces and then I added a little bit smaller border than I did on the top and the bottom. Um so now it’s ready for the long arm machine. Let’s go get it on Elanor. Look at all these little bunnies just hopping around. This was such a fun quilt to do and what a wonderful way to welcome in spring. Savannah, my wonderful daughter, editor-inchief, uh, amazing designer. She’s the one that came up with this. She sent me all kinds of bunnies and and carrots and things and and I put them all together in this quilt, which you can find a PDF for on our website. So, if you want to make that, head on over there and pick up that PDF. It’ll really help you to make this. Uh, it finished, I think, 62 and a half wide by 58 and a half long, I think. I can’t remember exactly. Uh, but it’s wider than it is tall. So, that’s kind of unusual. And I just I think it’s just perfect. We um quilted it with a beautiful little uh meander circular swirl that’s really really fun. Kind of reminds me of Easter eggs. And we’ve got on the back, we’ve got a pretty mint color. And I also use that to bind the quilt. All right. Well, listen, Paduka is right around the corner, and I hope to see you there. Uh, if you liked what you saw today, please like, share, and subscribe. Do all the things that make that algorithm sing. And until next time, stay quilting. Bye. [Music]