What, Huh?

When it comes time to lay out the elements on one of my quilts, I long ago learned an important lesson.  That is, that quilts are demanding and I should always give a quilt what it wants.

Like all the quilts I make, this quilt wanted a little something special. In the Flight of Fancy quilt, it was the pair of upside down birds.

An upside down bird didn't fit in the Colorado quilt, and believe me, I tried.

 This bird represented a barn, which in turn represented one of the many dozens of ranches in the area where P & J live.

 Each ranch had more than one barn, and they all seemed to be red.

This bird represents Andrew, a farmer from whom P & J buy hay for their animals. I met Andrew at the local Verizon store when he brought his cell phone in for some repairs. Andrew had his son with him.

When I was laying out the birds for the Colorado Quilt, I tried to make them look like they were having conversations in small groups. It seemed to make sense to have Andrew speaking to other ranchers. So Andrew faced the red barn, but it didn't seem to be enough.

 
Remembering Andrew's son, I made a smaller red barn to represent him, but later I realized I had got it wrong.

Except that I had really got it right. Andrew sold hay and did other work for the ranchers, and I had, with the addition of the second smaller bird, quite serendipitously, represented more than one ranch.

AND I had given the quilt just that little something extra, that made you look twice and think... hey, what's that all about?

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