Unlike the other grandchildren, I had no warning or prep time. Luckily for both of us, he won’t care when he actually gets his quilt.
As soon as I heard he was born I started planning a quilt. I figure, I love owls, I love paper piecing, lets put owls on his quilt.
My favorite paper-piece designer is Janeen Van Niekerk, she is unbelievably prolific. I wonder if many of her designs are just the pattern and haven’t been made yet. Who knows, what I do know is that I love her style.
Another one of her owls.
Side by side, she does realistic and whimsy so well.
Then we learned his name, Eyal, which means Gazelle or ram, but not deer. I didn’t want the image of a deer. Once again I went searching for anything that might be a Gazelle. Janeen is from South Africa, maybe she designed one?
Nope, but she did design a goat, which looks more like a gazelle than a deer. So now the quilt will be much more personalized.
Onto the background. You probably have noticed that I like to paper piece animals then put them on a background made of repeating blocks, The chickens, the octopus…
A book I have owned since I started quilting is The Quilters Album of Blocks and Borders by Jinny Beyer She published this in 1986, it is out of print but available as a used book. She documents quilt blocks, finding the earliest mention of the block, the different names it goes by and identifying the block as a four patch, nine patch etc.
This is how the blocks look in the book. A trick I learned from a class I took with Christy Fincher, use any of the layout apps on your phone to see how multiple blocks will look side by side.
I did, I really like the secondary designs that emerge. Yes, I’m sure people using EQ 7 are familiar with this technique, but for those of us who don’t want to be on a computer with a design program, this works really well.
First, make an actual block, not in the colors of the quilt, just to practice.
Then, tile it, yes, I am really liking the results.
Now to choose the actual fabrics. Yoch loves green, Yishai, not so much. But orange is also a good choice. So a little bit of green, hopefully not overwhelming.
I really like this, but, yes there is a big but, I think the cream background will end up competing with the animals, they might not stand out as much. Back to cutting up the fabric. Once again, people using EQ 7 will tell me they do all of this on the computer, well, I’m old fashioned, I like the hands-on planning.
Have you noticed that I am incorporating owls in the fabrics as well? Do you see the mistake I made? I didn’t see it until I tried to tile the pattern and it just looked weird. 
While fixing my mistakes, I changed the color of one of the small squares, why not?
Here I am so far, I really like the balance of shades and colors. I’m not sure exactly how I am going to lay this out, it’s a baby quilt, it will be easy to figure out.
I know Eyal’s parents will love this, I hope he does too. Meanwhile, friends have been sharing pictures of their grandkids on quilts I gave them. Ahh, such joy.
Leah