Day #7 Country Girl Modern Blog Hop

We’ve been hopping for a week now and are slowly coming to end of our hop…don’t stop hopping yet though. We have two more spots to hop. So far you should have met Mary from Country Threads, Michelle from Michelle’s Romantic Tangle, Julie for JulieK Quilts, Judy at Patchwork Times, Mary at Quilt Hollow, Moda’s Cutting Table and Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict.

So where to today you ask…we’re off to Quiltville with Bonnie Hunter. Bonnie really needs no introduction. If you’ve been reading quilting blogs for any length of time, you’ve likely stumbled across Bonnie’s site. When I was first reading blogs Bonnie’s is one that I stumbled one and continued going back and back and back. I still go back.

I love Bonnie’s MANY-MANY free patterns….speaking of which the quilt that she currently has on her quilting frame is one I really want to make. (photo stolen from Bonnie)

Awesome right?? If you’re a scrappy quilt gal like I am, it’s one that’s hard to resist. Best yet, Bonnie has free directions for the block here.

My current project, Pineapple Crazy, is a Bonnie Hunter design. You can find it her String Fling book.

I remember several years ago I was combing through Bonnie’s calendar hoping she’d be somewhere in my area and found she’d be teaching in Storm Lake, Iowa. That’s a 4.5 hour drive for me. I was chicken to go myself and tried to talk Kelli into going. At the time, Kelli was barely a quilter and thought I was a little crazy. She was up for a get away though and we went.

I am so glad we did. I really think that was the start of us wanting to work together…the couple days of staying together and the long drive was a great bonding experience for us.

We saw Bonnie again in Moline, Illinois…another long drive for us but we had fun and it was so worth it!

We started looking for future calendar dates that we could see Bonnie but didn’t see any in her calendar so we booked her and will be holding our own retreat featuring Bonnie in our area a the end of July this year….how “stalker-ish” is that?!

Anyway…you can see that we are Bonnie Hunter fans…Honestly, if you love her on the blog, you’ll love her even more in person. She’s a ball of energy and honestly a truly fun person.

One of the most challenging quilts I’ve made is her Perkimon Daydreams quilt. (Find the pattern in Scraps and Shirttails I)

If I’m not sewing a quilt we designed it’s more than likely Bonnie designed it. That’s one of biggest compliments I can give…she’s our favorite designer!

On a related note, if you hopped over to Moda’s Cutting Table and read Carrie’s review you’ll see that she mentioned loving the Quick Reference directions in our book. We can’t take credit for that at all. As we were putting the book together we looked at lots and lots and lots of quilt books. We were told to tell them what we would like for our book. Immediately both of us wanted an easy to read and understand directions….(photo credit to Moda’s Cutting Table) This Quick Reference Chart idea came from Bonnie. She has done that it all of her later books. We love this when using her books and reference it all the time. We asked our editor if it was okay to use this similar format and were given the thumbs up sign so we did. We love it!! Thanks Bonnie for thinking is all up.

So hop on over to the site of a master quilter, blogger, author, quilt designer, traveler, teacher and just plain out fun person….Quiltville with Bonnie Hunter!