A Classic Winnie the Pooh Baby Quilt When Winnie the Pooh Fabric Was Hard to Find

   Sometimes a baby quilt is just the project to get your quilt imagination going! But when my daughter Shannon's dance teacher of 10 years (since Shannon was 3!) was ready to have her longingly awaited baby, my joy at making a baby quilt quickly turned to panic...when I realized there just wasn't any Winnie the Pooh fabric in the quilt shops! And the dance teacher was absolutely set on having a Pooh-themed room...Classic Pooh, no less!

   After scouring the internet, all I could find were a few fat quarters...and a yard or two for the back. I was almost going to buy them, when I went up and down the isles of a different JoAnn's than I usually visit. There, tucked in the juvenile prints, were one or two prints. I grabbed them! Happy to have anything with Pooh, I quickly chose some coordinating pastels. It seems the dance teacher was NOT making it easy on me at all, as she wanted to be surprised by the sex of her baby. Since one of the prints was green, I had no choice but to incorporate light blue, light pink, yellow, and a pastel rainbow stripe, as well as a small piece of gold fabric that I thought looked like the color of honey. It got a little complicated because I didn't want to use any floral fabrics...after all, what if the baby was a boy?

  Once at home, I layed out the fabrics and thought. I thought a LOT! It seemed the quilt needed more of the Pooh fabric, so I went to my usual JoAnn's. Happily, they had more, and they even had a third Winnie the Pooh fabric...heaven!
Once this new fabric was home, the ideas came together more quickly. I took the white print with the scenic pictures of Pooh and his friends and decided to make it the centerpiece of the quilt. Then I remembered that Christopher Robin liked to fly kites, so I used a variation of the kite tails pattern to surround the center medallion...adding extra batting to the "kites" to make them pillowy and puffy. It is heavily quilted to help the quilt wear well, and I know baby Sophia (a girl!) enjoys many hours on her own Winnie the Pooh quilt made just for her!