The Final Six... Maybe?

I made six birds in a marathon session. I had gone through my photos and picked the ones I wanted to use as inspiration. At least one of them was never in my original group.  Here they are.

I don't know the story of this metal sculpture outside Mo Burrito in Salida, but I knew right away it would be the inspiration for a bird.

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My original thought was to mimic the sculpture for the color and fabric placement, but then I thought that was a bit too predictable, and I liked the rusty color of the comb, so I decided to change things up a bit.

That rusty orange wing fabric was a Halloween novelty a few years ago. I used it on the back of  my quilt, Too Much Chicken. The striped legs seemed appropriate.

 This is the inside of Mo Burrito restaurant in Salida CO. On this day one whole side of the building was open (the side was all garage doors) so it felt like you were eating outside. I take casual shots like this so I can show my friends where I went. In this shot, I wasn't looking for composition or a color story, just a picture of the inside of the restaurant taken from where I was sitting. But looking at this photo now what strikes me is the bright orange of the lights and the safety vests of the two customers compared to the dark interior. It makes me wonder if my subconscious brain kicked into high gear when those two customers came in, because without them, this photo would have been nothing to write home about. But with them, the photo is inspiration enough for a bird.

Several birds in the Colorado quilt are made with orange, and even a few with black, so I didn't want to make orange the primary color of this bird. Here it is more appropriate as an accent color.

This is the little painting I bought in Colorado that now hangs in my studio.

I could have used the salmon-y color of the roof of the barn for the beak, but I really liked the lavender purple.

 Since I bought my own home three years ago, I am always interested in how people landscape their property. This small front yard in Buena Vista had plantings of poppies, peonies, chives and rosemary.

So this bird has purple for the chive flowers, salmon pink for the peonies and green for the leaves.

P&J and my Mom were deep in a conversation with a shop owner in Buena Vista. While waiting for them to finish, I looked up and saw this lovely arrangement of dried flowers on the top of an armoire.

The colors aren't exactly right, but they are suggestive enough of the original to satisfy me.

This is P&J's gray cat Ruby.

This grey bird is based on Ruby. Ruby has green eyes, and so this bird's beak is green.


I think I'm done making birds for the Colorado Quilt. I'm not quite sure. As I lay out the blocks in the final design, I might need to make a few birds to fill in some empty spaces, and there is no guarantee that every bird I made will make it on the quilt (although they will go on the back).

This process has been very enlightening. Making birds based on the things I saw in Colorado has imprinted that vacation in my mind so firmly that I know I will remember my trip to Colorado more vividly than many other trips I have taken in the past.



By the way, if you want to make birds, you can buy my tutorial explaining how here, on my Etsy shop.