Deadline quilt...without the deadline!

I recently was invited to a baby shower for a dear friend's first grandchild...this little girl is a very much longed for (and anticipated) baby, so something special was definitely in order. I could have picked up a cute onesie or three, but what fun would that be, especially when I found this cute assortment of fabrics?  This fabric with the owls just called to me (really, I come      home with more fabric that way!), and I set about deciding  what pattern to make it out of. The baby shower fell right in  the middle of  'bus trip' season, so I wanted to work with  something fairly easy and quick, and I decided to play with  the Ten Minute block and downsize it to fit the proper scale.That led to a cryptic post on my Facebookwall one morning, looking for layout opinions.I love Facebook...because I certainly got opinions! Some required more unsewing than others! I finally settled on the bottom left layout, because I wanted to highlight the owl fabric. I had to make one more trip to the fabric store to get more to use in the borders...and the borders are what I want this post to highlight. This is a picture I took of my design wall as I was trying to sort out the border and backing fabric selection.  I had wanted to showcase the owl fabric, but against the vibrant colors I paired it with, it was just kind of lost.  I finally hit on the idea of adding a stripe of the pink in the border along with the print, and I liked that idea a lot.  The other colors were pieced to make the back of the quilt, and I started making the owl/pink/owl strip sets for the border.It's a good thing I was ahead of Baby Shower deadline, because I realized as soon as I started laying the borders out - this wasn't going to work unless I used mitred borders on the quilt.I've avoided mitred borders (and a few other things) like the plague in my sewing career.  This time, because I had time on my side,  I took a cup of decaf up to the studio, searched YouTube, and explored the wonder of working with  a mitre corner. The link to the video I used, courtesy of Fat Quarter Shop, is here.It turns out that it's not so difficult, when you take the time crunch element out of it.   By giving myself almost a week in advance to play, I was able to enjoy the 'zen' of the creative process, and to work on something that I might never have tried otherwise. Another cog in the never ending quest of Time Managment Solutions.This is the final product...nothing terribly earth shattering, but something that I am happy with. The note to new Mommy Alison and Daddy Brian is that this is meant to be used (and abused!), not to be put on a shelf somewhere. Time to dust off the what else can I try list, and start working on that.  Stay tuned!