Fussing and Finagling

 I know I can sometimes make it LOOK easy, but it really isn't.

This is the left side of the fourth "row" up from the bottom of the Green Birds Quilt. (Thanks for all the great suggestions for titles by the way. I haven't chosen one yet.)

So yeah, ok, I have to add some fabric to the tops and sides of the blocks and then join them together so they are straight and square. Not so easy.

Anyway, I added the olive-y fabric to the bottom of the brown bird on the left and stuck it up on the wall and immediately had second thoughts.

I ignored them and went to work on the birds on the right side of the row. The great debate there was whether I should sew all five birds together in ONE row or raise the right side, in which case I would need a narrow set in square to get it all to fit the way I wanted. I can do that, no problem, but the size of the set-in square would be less than one inch tall, and that to me was excessively "fiddly."

I try to avoid "cute" and excessively fussy and "fiddly." (One of the students in my class last week told me that using that term, "fiddly," marked me as a native Granite Stater. That was new to me.)

I ended up replacing the offending strip of fabric before I got to the other problem.

So I decided, brilliant me that I am (speaking facetiously), I would trim 1/4" off the top of that three block panel, and then sew the two panels together, and then trim the excess 1/2" or so from the BOTTOM of that same panel.

Well you know damn well it wasn't quite THAT simple. Much fussiness and fiddling ensued. The air turned blue. Yes, I swore. Often and loudly. But I kept my cool and got it done.

AND WHEN I DID GET IT DONE, I put all my tools away and cleaned my worktables. I knew that staying OUT of the studio for the rest of the day would help me keep my sanity.

I haven't sewn that fourth row to the rest of the quilt yet. I have learned to avoid pushing my luck.

The next group will be at the upper right, and before I finish the top I expect to insert at least three set in squares. But one thing at a time, and one block at a time. This would have been much simpler if I had used WOW (white on whites) for the backgrounds of the birds, but been there done that, and I like to push boundaries, so here I am. I am more or less pleased with this.

And oh yeah, see that yellow bird, far left, second row from the bottom? He has WAY too much of that same fabric all around him and that will have to change.

One, Two Three

 I've started to assemble the blocks in the Green Birds quilt. This quilt needs a name. (Hint, hint.)

Here is the very bottom row.

Here the bottom two rows are sewn together.

Here the bottom three rows are sewn together.

Thus far, all I have done is extend the size of the bird block and sew them together. Thus far the rows line up, but after this the birds jump around a bit and they won't fit together in neat rows.

I'm not showing HOW I plan to fit them together, because the last time I did that quilters used my layout and essentially copied it and used it on their own quilts. So, sorry, but not sorry.

Class!

 

It was a good day at the Night Owl Quilting Studio yesterday as I taught my Liberated Birds class. Above is Lynne (not me) with her first bird. Pretty sure the smile on her face tells it all.

And this is Lisa, who had a blast.

This is Karey, before she figured out how long her bird's legs should be.

I didn't get to take a lot of pictures, because I was very busy, but a great time was had by all. The next class is May 31st.

Six More Green Birds

 I made six more birds on Sunday.

 

This is a revised bird...

This was the original. I felt the wing was weak and didn't look very solid.

This is another revised bird, facing in a different direction.

The orange beak was wrong.

I needed a green bird with a light background so I made this one.

Another revised bird. By this time I'm figuring out that I need birds with particular backgrounds - light - medium - dark or busy or plain.

There was nothing wrong with this guy, but I felt he was too dark.

This is a rebuilt bird. Meaning I kept the wing and. breast and body and replaced everything else.

All the revised birds had the same background fabric throughout. This one had more different fabrics than most and I felt it looked a little disjointed.

I needed a yellow bird with a medium green background so I made this one. I love the wing fabric and thought the juvenile jungle print was a perfect pairing. I even tried to fit a fussy cut monkey in the head triangle. I don't remember when or why I bought these yellows, but I am glad I did.

I've been arranging and rearranging the birds on the design wall and this is very close to "IT." I plan to revise the birds at the very top upper left and right, and I need to fill in the empty space.

This is tricky. Not only do I have to balance the left and right facing birds, but their color and the color of their backgrounds. I am pretty sure I know what I am going to do in the empty spaces, but I won't really know until I start putting these together.

And just so you know, a rule I have about assembling bird blocks into quilts is that I won't cut a bird apart, but I might trim legs, or the block above the head, or space on either side. I don't have any trouble using a set-in square wherever I need to.

If you want to make birds, you can get my tutorial here, at my Etsy shop.

More "Green" Birds

 I was busy yesterday...

This is a new bird.

This is a revised bird. This one has a new breast and body fabric because I didn't have any of the original left. The beak is also new.

This is a new bird.

This is new also. Believe it or not both of these two came from the same wing fabric.

Oh, a stash is a wonderful thing.

Another new bird. This one came from the backing of one of the Nightingale quilts.

I modified this bird. I replaced the different greens with the same green batik throughout. 

Another new bird made from fabric I bought on sale.

I'm not even sure why I bought this fabric, when or where it came from.

Another new bird.

This is a revised bird, but he's facing in a different direction.

This is a revised bird.

This is all of them up on the design wall, including the last five that need modifying. This isn't the best picture, but what I like best is that it gives the general impression of "green."

I texted Julie some of the photos while I was working and she wrote back, "You found your groove."

Yup.

Again, Happy Mother's Day

Revised Birds

 Here are some before and after birds:

This is a really handsome block, and part of it is the combination of the warm green background and the  brown in the breast and body fabrics. The blue-grays in the wing fabric are also warm tones, so this combination is very harmonious.

The bird now doesn't look quite so handsome in photos but in real life it's better. The background fabric has very subtle light green dots that don't seem to photograph well. Still though, if this does not illustrate that colors look different depending on what surrounds them, then I don't know what will.

I really liked this bird, with the flowers on the wing fabric.

Fussy-cutting can really show something off well. Here I think I fussy cut the wing of THIS bird better than I did the original. Just goes to show that you really have to play and possibly risk wasting a little bit of fabric to find something that really sings.

This bird was kind of a missed opportunity. His wing looks ok...

until you see the replacement bird. I always try to fill the wing shape in my birds in an interesting way and I can never understand why other customers and students resist. 

One gal actually complained that the birds "waste fabric" because I suggest fussy-cutting. Well at $12.95/yard USD, one square inch of fabric costs 0.00856 cents, or less than one cent per square inch. In fact, at that rate one bird uses up $1.17272 worth of fabric. So my question is, why make something only so-so when with a little more effort you can make something really special? 

Let's face it, the basic cup of coffee at Dunkin's costs $2.49. That would make TWO birds.

Here is another original version.

And here's the replacement. I tried to make the replacement birds as close to the original as I could, but that didn't mean I was interested in slavishly copying them. Nobody is going to see the "originals," so they won't know the difference.

I have to reiterate here, that what I didn't like about the "original" birds was the yellow green fabrics of the backgrounds mixed with the birds with the lighter backgrounds. Had I made ALL the birds with the yellow-green backgrounds I would probably have been OK, but that color just didn't sing for me. I thought it was too much of a green that I didn't like. Since I don't want to make work I am not very proud of, I decided to switch gears.

Part of that was I had an idea of where I wanted this quilt to go, and it wasn't going there. I did not feel that what was happening on my design wall was very successful, and filling in the spaces between the birds would have been problematic. The goal of any design is to have a cohesive idea and what was on the design wall was not that. Again, this was MY decision, and MY opinion. There is, always, more than one solution to any design problem. 

Happy Mother's Day to all Moms and mother figures everywhere. It's a tough job with no instruction manual and every kid being different and the world changing every day. Go Moms!

Change Partners and Dance

 I tell my students all the time that it's easy to know when we get it right, and often we know when it isn't working, but when it's in that place where we are not sure... that's the hardest thing. It's the hardest thing because it could be OK. You have to decide whether to keep going or trash the idea and do something else.

This requires courage and some bit of fearlessness.

But when I look at the design wall quickly, what I see isn't birds, it's GREEN. Now, while I wanted to make a green quilt, the birds are also important. If what I see FIRST isn't the birds, then I have a problem.

Now you may disagree with me, and you are entitled to your opinion, but this is going to be MY quilt, and to paraphrase... "it's my party and I'll cry if I want to."

When I conceived the idea for this quilt, I ordered some light green fabrics, but I was so eager to get going that I started making blocks before my fabrics arrived. Those blocks had darker greens as background fabrics.

SO... I have decided to remake the bird blocks with the darker green backgrounds. It's actually faster for me to make an entire new block than to take the blocks apart and replace the background fabrics.

To wit:

This block...

Now looks like this.

This bird

became this one, and yes I know I pointed this one in the wrong direction.

and this guy

Now looks like this.

I'll be rebuilding several birds, but not all of them.

I'll be leaving this guy alone. If the backgrounds "read" as light, they will stay as they are.