If I were to pinpoint a moment when I first became I quilter I would have to say it was when I found out I was going to be an Aunt. I knew I wanted to create something special and I had just caught the sewing bug so I figured quilting wouldn't be that hard. After the first quilt was done I was hooked. They became my go to present for family and close friends that were expecting.
I had purchased a couple different pattern books and started making which patterns were my favorite. I quickly found that my favorite book was Warm Welcome: Cozy Quilts for Baby by Mary Hickey. This was how I came to make one of my all time favorite quilts, the Owl Quilt. I fell in love immediately with the Nine Patch Star quilt pattern when I got this book but didn't know when or how I would use it until I was perusing the baby prints at JoAnns. I came across this super cute owl fabric set.
There were two owl prints and a coordinating background print. I knew I had to have it and remembered the Nine Patch Star quilt pattern that would be perfect for these prints. All I needed to find was an assortment of yellow prints to finish this. After what felt like an entire of day of taking every yellow fat quarter and comparing each possible combination I had everything but the backing for the quilt. For the backing of my baby quilts I always use Minky dot fabrics and satin bindings. They just give it that something extra I think.
Now of course most people would start something like this early in the pregnancy. I, however, thought this was a perfect thing to start the week before the baby shower. Totally doable right? The assembly of the blocks for this quilt were very straight forward and pretty easy to put together. The blocks consisted of nine square blocks, half-square triangles and a variation of a half square triangle.
The more blocks I finished the more I was falling in love with this quilt. There were definitely moments in construction I didn't think I would actually part with it due to its cuteness.
Once the quilt top was pieced I started to determine what quilt pattern I was going to use on this. I wanted something sophisticated and elegant and perfect but also knew I didn't have weeks to complete the quilting. I also wanted to ensure that the pattern of the quilt itself wasn't lost in the quilting. I decided that I would the highlighted decorative stitch below to create a grid effect in the middle of the nine square blocks.
When this was finished I decided I needed a little more quilting to add a little more detail. I decided to add a swirl pattern to the white spaces in the quilt. This added just what I was looking or in the quilt.
The final quilting to be determined was how I was going to decorate the border. Once again I wanted to keep this simple but elegant. I choose two decorative stitches that I spaced about an inch apart.
I was very pleased with how perfect the quilting fit with the pattern and fabrics. I finished the binding for this quilt the night before the baby shower. I was able to give it a wash to remove my water soluble basting thread and get it wrapped.
One thing I wish I had added to this quilt was a tag. I had seen mention of adding tags on a couple of different blogs but it hasn't been until recently that I started looking into what type of tag I would like and how I would like to add them.
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