An 'Owl' quilt for Edna

What better than a quilt of owls for a special lady who loves owls to help her on her with her recovery after an illness!

Edna is a special lady at church who is now 83 years old. She has an obsession with owls so when I decided to make her a little knee rug recently, a quilt covered with Owls seemed the only way to go.

I spent nearly an hour choosing all my 'owl' fabrics at Spotlight, picked up one of their patterns to use, got my number and then waited for my number to be called. Anyone who shops at Spotlight knows you can wait up to an hour to be served when they are busy!! This day was no exception.  Just as my number was called I noticed two 'owl' quilts hanging from the ceiling - the first was the same as the one I had picked the fabric for but the second was a little different. It had some larger panels with owls on it - patterns I hadn't seen in my hour selecting the fabrics.

It turned out that the second quilt was a panel that only needed the binding sewn on to it. For the first time ever I decided to buy the panel!  I would only have to cut and sew the binding on to the panel. Having decided to buy the panel it was with mixed feelings I took my trolley full of owl fabrics and put them all back on the shelf. What had taken an hour to choose only took a few minutes to put back!!

I went home, washed the fabric for the binding, dried it on the line (it was a really hot day so was dry in 40 minutes) and ironed it ready to cut into strips. It wasn't long before the strips were cut and machine sewn onto the edge of the quilt. The same evening I hand stitched the bind down.

I sat looking at the finished quilt amazed that I had 'made' a quilt in one afternoon!!

With the quilt finished it looked great and I knew Edna would love it but somehow I felt like I'd cheated! There was no cutting the fabric, sewing the blocks together or putting the batting and backing on.  I didn't even have to quilt the panel as it was already machine quilted!

I am not sure I will make a quilt this way again but it was fun and it was lovely to be able to give the quilt to Edna so she could snuggle up under it while she rested.

An Owl panel quilt for Edna

A few days after making the owl quilt for Edna a friend asked if I would make them a quilt for their daughter. This started me thinking more about making quilts to sell so I decided that it would be good to make a couple of machine stitched quilts. So with this in mind I headed back to Spotlight, straight to the owl print fabrics, filled my trolley, took my number and again waiting for my number to be called! Thankfully it didn't take me an hour to pick out the fabrics and I only had to wait 20 minutes to be served!!

Some of my 'owl' print fabrics ready to be sewn into a quilt.