The Owl Quilt begins

For some years now i've admired patchwork quilts from afar. I find the idea of making them comforting and part of me loves the idea of carrying on a tradition. Much like with my lampworking I suppose. It's an age-old craft and takes both a level of skill and a creative eye. For some reason I kept this fondness to myself. Maybe I feared being judged, as quilting used to have a reputation for being the hobby of choice for either old women or stereotypical patriotic, god-fearing American women. However, my love of fabric led me to a number of quilting blogs that have proved that quilts, much like bow ties, are cool!

I decided to bite the bullet and begin my quilting journey. I've told several people i'm doing it, to give myself some motivation to actually see this project through. I'm afraid I have a habit of going 'all in' with a craft/hobby, buying everything in sight, only for it to end up in a box in the conservatory gathering dust. My Husband says he doesn't mind as long as I tell him which boxes can safely be put up in the loft for a while ;)

My first project is going to be an Owl Quilt. Inspired by my baby Daughter's love of owls, especially the book 'T'wit T'woo' by Maddy McClellan, I'm using owl print fabrics. I've also decided to have the fabric in owl shapes on the quilt. Even though at this stage it was just a vague idea, typical me just *had* to go ahead and buy the fabric, spending way too much money in the process. The designs I've chosen are:-

'Who's Hoot' by Michael Miller



'Loves U Who's Who' by Moda



Sunshine Hippy Owls by JoAnn's



'Camp Fun Time' by Hoffman



'On a Whim' by Amy Schimler for Robert Kaufman



'Owls' in cream and brown by Timeless Treasures (from the Apple range by Alice Kennedy)



I originally planned a nine square design but soon realised that my fabrics didn't cater for this. Instead, i've chosen a 6 panel design with border as shown in the (v.rough) sketch below:-



Each owl will be placed on a rectangle of contrasting fabric (most of my fabrics being mainly brown or mainly cream). A border will go around this panel in a plain fabric (not yet bought but i'm thinking dark orange or brown). The top and bottom borders will be in the 'Who's Hoot' fabric as the pattern runs the right way for this to work. However, it wouldn't work for the side borders unless I used multiple pieces (only having 1/2m of this design). To get round this i'm going to make the side borders out of pieces of the fabrics i'm using for the owls.

I've now worked out which fabrics will be teamed up to make each owl and I did this by trying different combos on paper like this:-



Please note, the patterns i've drawn just represent each fabric, and are not supposed to look like them ;)

Since starting the process i'm hooked and i'm keen to start another quilt, for me this time, using proper girlie fabrics in bright sunny colours. More on that next time though...

Oh, just before I go, I want to tell you about the button at the side that says "I took the process pledge". I saw it on r0ssie's blog and hereby declare that...

I, __LittleMoo__, pledge to talk more about my processes, even when I can’t quite put them in the in words or be sure I’m being totally clear. I’m going to put my thinking and my gut feelings out there.