Mom's Bird Quilt finished!

 

The bird quilt I made for my mother is finished. I sewed the binding while binge-watching older seasons of Bridgerton so I would be caught up when I watched the first episodes of season 4.

I have to take it out for beauty shots, but it's really cold out, so I don't know when that will happen. It will have to be soon because my Mom really wants her quilt, and quite frankly, I don't blame her. 

I hate taking pictures of quilts in all the same places, and the snow makes it tricky. I'll have to figure out something. 

In the meantime I have gathered photos of each of the birds and am in the process of writing the story of the quilt, and of each bird in it.

A reminder for those of you who are new: if you want to make your own birds (they are so much fun) you can get my tutorial here, and ONLY HERE, at my Etsy shop.

Win Some, Lose Some.

I'm sewing the binding on my Mom's bird quilt.

She was really excited to see it and came over to check it out.

She loves it, and thinks it is just wonderful. 

Great stuff!

I received this beautiful Amaryllis for Christmas, and like all pink Amaryllis's, it was very slow to open, but it had two stalks and twelve blooms. And like other pink ones, it was VERY tall. I have a special stake to hold it upright.

However, gravity rules.

Mom's Bird Quilt, Quilted

 

I picked up my Mom's bird quilt from Janet-Lee. Here is a closeup shot of the quilting. 

Here's another picture. I really love the quilting.

I've added the binding to the quilt, and will be finishing it over the next few days.

My mother is going to be very happy with this.

If you want to make your own birds, you can get my tutorial here.

Bird's the Word

 

I'm going to have to beef up my presence on Facebook if I want to combat the spammers who stole my tutorial and direct readers to my legitimate sales location on Etsy. To that end I'll be posting a lot of bird stuff over the next few days. If you do Facebook, go over and follow me, please. I'm Lynne Tyler over there.

***Update: Apparently I've got to set up a Professional profile in Facebook. I find it incredibly confusing and it's taking some time. Please bear with me. I SO appreciate your support. 

I've also decided to update the bird tutorial with a few little hints my in-class students have suggested, so I'm working on that. Also, Susan suggested I write a sort of Birds, Part Two tutorial that includes instructions on making hummingbirds and flamingos, and other bird variations, so I'm working on that too.

Thanks for your support. And if you want to buy any of my tutorials, they are 25% off for the month of January, go to my Etsy Shop, Patchery Menagerie, here.

Working in the Studio

 

I spent the last couple of days cleaning the studio and preparing backings and bindings for the quilts I have been making.

Next up I'll be sewing the binding on the Green birds quilt.

For those of you who haven't made birds yet, you can get my tutorial for them here at my Etsy shop.

Assembling Mom's Bird Quilt

 

Assembling the bird quilt, because the birds aren't aligned in neat rows and columns, is really fussy.

I have a plan I work out and try to follow it as best I can, but sometimes I make changes when I think of something better or easier to sew together.

It's important to keeps things straight and square and my laser level helps me make that happen.

Things change, and I have to adapt.

So here is the finished flimsy. It's about 60" x 78".

My Mom will love it. I have the backing ready so the quilt is ready to be quilted.

The Last Birds?

I made a few more birds for my Mom's quilt. These don't represent any person or idea. They are just birds based on fabrics that I liked and thought they were fun. 

This one has Laurel Burch fabrics. way back when, my Mom and I both had Laurel Burch jewelry.

The wing fabric on this bird was fabric I used in the backing of the Harlequin Scrap Slab Triangle quilt. I added some black on white fabric for the bird's breast, but something niggled at my memory. Turns out I used the same fabric combination in a bird with a green background, and it is in the Green Birds quilt. I made this bird facing in the opposite direction and I made sure the beak was a different color.

This reminded me that very often I would go shopping and later show my mom my purchase and she would say, "Oh, that's gorgeous! Can you get one like it for me?"

The wing fabric in this bird was fabric I included in the Needle in a Haystack quilt. The legs are fabric that shows a lot of drawing and drafting pencils, because my Mom and I both specialized in pencil drawings.

I've had the wing fabric for this bird for well over ten years, probably more. I liked the Art Deco feel of it, but haven't used it in many quilts. It seemed perfect for a bird.

I don't usually buy Fat Quarter packs, but the wing of this bird was part of a pack of Jane Sassaman fabrics. Both of the other fabrics are batiks, and were already in my stash.

These are all the birds. There are 43 of them. These are not arranged in any particular order, That will come next. 

You too, can make birds. They are an awful lot of fun. You can get my tutorial here, at my Etsy shop.

Sewing Bird for Mom

 

I made a sewing bird for my Mom. She made all my clothes until I was eight years old so I wanted to do a sewing bird for her.

More Birds for Mom's Bird Quilt

 

Now that I have made all the birds based on members of my family, I am making birds based on things I know my Mom likes. She likes the color Orange, so I made this bird.

She also really likes the color Yellow, so I made this one.

My Mom isn't necessarily a Pink fan, but years ago when one of my cousins got married, my Mom wanted to make herself a dress to wear to the wedding. She said she wanted to be "demurely elegant." The dress she ended up making was Hot Pink. So I had to make a bird to commemorate that!

You too can make birds. My tutorial, available on Etsy, tells you how. You can get it here.

Mom's Art Bird

I tell my students all the time, "Don't buy fabrics you fall in love with UNLESS you have a definite plan to cut it up and use it in a quilt."

Great advice. But we all do it. I bought a lot of J. Wecker Frisch's fabrics and while I have used bits of them very judiciously, I still have an awful lot of it.

As my Mother spent a lot of her career as a professional artist, it was clear that I had to make an Art Bird to represent her in her quilt. I was able to cut into my J. Wecker Frisch fabrics and put together what I think is a nifty bird that represents my Mom.

Can you say "fussy cuts galore?"

If you want to make birds, you can get my tutorial that tells you how. It's on my Etsy shop, here.

The HOW and the WHY of Fabric Choices

 I am opinionated. I believe that all other things being equal, fabric selection determines the success or failure of a quilt. 

There are lots of ways to make something look good. There isn't only one right answer. The right answer depends on what YOU want.

Having said that, I really want to make sure the quilts that I make or even simply the birds that I make are as great as they can be. And believe me, sometimes even I have to do it over to get it really right.

To wit:

I used this fun fabric on the back of the PRIZM quilt, and I thought it would be fun in a bird for my Mom's bird quilt because my mom loves FUN and a good joke. So I cut a big triangle and searched through my stash for breast and beak fabrics.

I was probably thinking with only half my brain. The wrong half. I thought the orange would sort of echo the patterns on the cats in the print. And the green would echo the green cats. But seriously, there is nothing to connect the three fabrics together, and compared to the fun cats, the orange and green are pretty boring and don't bring anything to the party. (Also, and more importantly, they don't share any OTHER colors with the fun print, and there's nothing connecting the wing fabric to the breast fabric to the beak fabric.)

Another issue was the pattern of the cats wasn't really being taken advantage of in the best way. 

BACK TO THE CUTTING TABLE....

Fiddling around a little bit (Can you say FUSSY CUT?) I found this fun green guy, and then it was OBVIOUS I had to use some fun green fabric for the bird breast.

And, OH! Look what I found for the beak! These colors repeat the colors that surround the silly green cat!

This is SO MUCH BETTER! And when I found that strip of bird legs with the colored blocks, I knew I had a winner. Silly and fun, here we come!

But you know, sometimes one idea generates another one, and you know me... gotta follow that!

So here are more silly cat-like animals having fun. The breast fabric here is leftover blue fabric from the backing of the Blue Ribbons quilt I just finished. The legs are gray, and they seemed to fit perfectly.

But check out that beak fabric! Yes, those colors are in the funny animal print too....

See anything familiar?

When I say look at your fabric for what it CAN BE instead of just WHAT IT IS, I am not joking.

Here are the two fabrics next to each other, so you can see how much they have in common. This kind of similarity is something you have to be on the lookout for.

You too can make birds: Get my tutorial here, at my Etsy shop.

More Birds

 I've made a couple more birds for my Mom's bird quilt. Here is a green one. I have made myself a promise that these birds will come from the fabrics in my scrap bins.

Not that that limits me in any way!

These two do not represent anybody in my family. I made them because I liked the wing fabrics.

As usual, these have given me some ideas, and I am going to make a few more. Oh gee, where have you heard that before? Making birds is fun and rather addictive!

You can make birds too! Go here to get my tutorial at my Etsy shop!

Niece & More Birds

 

This is my Niece's bird. I made this bird back in July, and I am showing it to you again because I am making birds based on family members for a bird quilt I am making for my mother. My niece has a partner and I wanted to show you his bird too.

When I met him last year, I found out he loved maps, so I used a fabric that reminded me of the topological lines on maps as the wing fabric. My niece send me a photograph of the two of them taken when they were hiking. They both looked so happy and bright I decided to use bright colors for this bird's breast.

They have a black dog, Nona, and she has a bit of white on her chest. This is Nona.

If you too want to make birds based on family members, friends, or anything you see, you can get my tutorial here, at my Etsy shop.

More Family Birds

 

I've been moving along with making birds based on my family members for my Mom's bird quilt. This is my nephew. You can see the quilt I made for him when he graduated from high school, here. (Lightning in the Night Sky. ) It's about halfway down. You can see other pictures here, when I gave it to him. His reaction was priceless.

This is the bird I made that represents his wife.

More birds to come!

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

Another Bird

I've made another bird for my mother's bird quilt. I had had a pile of blacks with bright colors on my worktable and told myself I had to make a bird from the fabrics that were on the table.

You too can make birds. Get my tutorial here, at my Etsy shop, to get started.
 

Green Deco Done!

 

I finished the Green Deco quilt and took it out for Beaty shots. This is my favorite. 

It's so gorgeous this weekend, I have to enjoy the lovely weather while it lasts.

I've been sewing the Blue Macnas quilt together and working outside to put the garden to bed. Inside I've been doing some cleaning and reorganizing of some areas that have been a bit neglected.

I've also been sewing the binding of the Green Birds quilt.

I have lots of student birds to show you from my trip to New York, but I've been busy settling back in, and it seems to have taken me a bit longer to get my groove back.

If you want to make your own birds, you can get my tutorial here, at my Etsy shop. It's an instant download, so you can get started right away.

I'm BACK!

 

I'm BACK!  Last weekend I drove out to Clifton Park NY. (I took the 3 hour 31 minute route. It wound through the mountains in Vermont and was very scenic. I did not want to travel on the Mass Pike and 495 (the dark blue route.)

I gave a trunk show on Finding Inspiration and taught a workshop to the Quilt North group in Clifton Park. As you can see we had a grand time.

Speaking of Inspiration, my contact at the guild, Laura, were coming out of a shop and across the parking lot was this building. I took one look at it and stopped to take a picture. "This would make a terrific quilt! Look at those colors and those shapes," I exclaimed. "Gonna store that away for later." Laura stopped beside me. "Yeah, you're right. What do you do with the pictures you take?" I told her I put them in a folder or album on my phone called "Inspiration," so when I need ideas I can find them all in one place.

I'll show. you more of the birds the group made later, but right now I'm just so happy to be home and have all the quilts back where they belong.

I brought 23 quilts. That's a lot. This hotel rack came in super handy when it was time to move them all around.

I got home, emptied the car and the suitcase. I put the dirty clothes in the washing machine, and then unpacked my quilts. Since I store them in my closet, I fold them lengthwise after the trunk show. Makes it so much easier to put them away again. 

This makes me happy!

I put all the quilts back on the walls where they belonged. I love the Quick Brown Fox quilt so much!

I visited a quilt shop and bought some low key fabrics. These will be Lights in either Macnas or Scrap Slab Triangle quilts in the future. I've since run them through the washing machine and now I have to iron them.

I had a great time, and I'm glad to be back home in my own house and my own bed!

If you want to make your own birds, you can get my tutorial here, at my Etsy Shop. It's an instant download so you can get started right away!