Marcie's Bunny and Birds

I took a break from working on Folk-Tails, Sue Spargo's 2015 BOM, to stitch Bertie's Spring by Bonnie Sullivan. I added some embellishing stitches, notably the buttonhole scallops on the baby chick wings and bullion knots for the bird legs. I decided to eliminated the half square triangle sashing and border on Bonnie's pattern and I was really undecided on borders for the wool appliqué. I thought about designing a wool appliqué border but then I saw some linen fabric I purchased at the 2014 Houston Quilt Festival in my sewing room. There were 7 15" by 15" of beautiful 100% Italian linen. After some careful calculations, I determined I would have enough linen fabric to make a piano key linen border. Linen is more loosely woven than regular quilting cotton and tends to shift and fray easily so I starched each piece of linen with Mary Ellen's Best Press which made cutting the 1 1/2" strips much easier. After machine quilting, I will be giving the quilt to my daughter. The quilt is about 32" by 38".