Hey Peeps!!!

This Peeps Bunting was the demo at Needles and Pins quilt shop this past Saturday. The pattern is from http://www.dana-made-it.com/. There's a tutorial on her site making it as they taught at the demo.....the old fashioned way....the use your sewing machine to sew around each and every bunny way. As a serious proponent of instant gratification, I took matters into my own hand and made a few adjustments.

First, everyone was making their buntings in one solid color of Peep bunnies. My sister and I decided that we'd buy quarter yards of 4 different colors. I whipped out my trusty retractable tape measure and we calculated that we could lay 5 bunnies across each quarter yard strip, so we could make really long 20-bunny buntings, or 2 10-bunny buntings...one for us and one for our daughters. (Yes, Jen, if you're reading this, yours is on the table in the foyer if you stop by).

The original instructions want you to cut out your bunny tempate, lay it on the felt and use a Sharpie to draw around it for cutting, then you can turn your bunny over to hide the ink lines. This will not do for those of us who are obsessive/compulsive. We do not want ink on our fabric. So what I did was to tear sheets of freezer paper to fit my folded length of felt and draw my bunnies on the freezer paper, which I then ironed to one side of the felt.

The more I looked at these bunnies and all their curviness, and the later in the evening it became, the more I knew that I did not want to be up all night sewing together bunnies, so I next decided to cut sheets of Heat n Bond to sandwich between my folded felt and I fused it down at the same time I was ironing the freezer paper to the top layer.

A couple of pins in each one to keep the two pieces together while I cut them out with fabric scissors. The cutting of 20 bunny shapes went rather quickly. I finished cutting out 20 bunnies in well under 30 minutes. (Hey Accuquilt!!!! You should think about a Peeps bunny shape die.)

Peel off the freezer paper, but do not peel off the fusible web paper yet. As you'll see on the original site, you then dip a pencil eraser into some brown paint and dab on the face. Leaving the waxy Heat n Bond paper intact prevents the paint from bleeding through to the bunny back, which allows you to keep the backs and fronts together. If you don't slop the paint on, they dry pretty quick (another 30 minutes or less).

Once they're dry you can tear off the fusible paper and grab a ribbon or some twine, or whatever your preference to hang them on. I've got a boatload of ribbon, so I just found a satin I liked (though I'd have preferred a grosgrain).

Lay your bunnies face down on your ironing board (yep, that's face down, it's the paint that bled through the felt that you're looking at). Put them pretty close to one another (less than an inch apart at the ears). Remember, they're going to bow out once you hang them and the ribbon arcs.  Be sure you lay your ribbon face down, and leave some room for fusing above it. Slap on the bunny backing (because you kept them together when you painted, they'll line up perfectly because they were cut at the same time).  And then fuse the back and front together with the ribbon sandwiched inbetween. Sometimes you have to go back and hit the ears with the iron again, but they'll stick, trust me. Oh, and if you have an applique pressing cloth (no stick), you might want to go ahead and use that.

That's all there is. If you've got all the time in the world, you can stitch all of your bunny backs to the ribbon and then outline stitch the bunnie back and front together (this is how it's done on the dana-made-it site). My attention span for a project like this is just a little over an hour...no more than two, so I just told myself that you don't see any stitching lines in a marshmallow peep, so this way was a good way. :) (We can convince ourselves of anything, can't we).

We were at the quilt shop, so of course, we bought 'real' wool felt that cost $9.25 a yard rather than swinging over to JoAnn for their felt at half the price, but I think we had a better color selection that more matched the actual peeps. In fact, the shop owner had gone out and bought peeps of every color and had them laying out on the colors that most closely matched, which was great. The ribbon and fusible I had on hand, so the project cost me just over $4.50 per bunting. Not bad, and an evening's entertainment while I watched PeeWee Herman on Broadway on HBO.

Have fun if you make these, feel free to use my quick and easy fusible method or go for the original dana-made-it.com sewn method. Whichever way suits you, I'm sure you'll wind up with an adorable Peeps bunting.

Check back tomorrow for my shopping show and tell from the Lancaster show. I've got the photos ready, but I've had some comments on Facebook asking after this project, so thought I'd slip this one in.

Happy Wednesday! Only 3 days to plod through before the weekend.