Right Facing Birds

 I received some right facing birds from Janet and Liz,

This is from Liz, who made this bird in a class I taught way back in 2018.

This is from Janet.

Another bird from Janet.

I am always interested to see what other quilters do with my birds. I am not sure I would have used a solid black breast for this last bird, but it looks fabulous!

I've got a few mored birds flying towards my house. I'll get to work on that bird quilt just as soon as I finish assembling the Spring Fling quilt.

Later this week I'll share some photos from the bird class at NightOwl Quilt Studio.

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

Mavis's Bird Quilt

A few days ago I got an email from Mavis. Her bird quilt, named "Who's Watching Who?" won 3rd Prize in her category at Quilt Canada. 

Mavis said she worked on her quilt for several years.

Mavis was thoughtful in her use of the fabrics that changed from being in the sun to being in the shadow. It's easy to forget this is patchwork, and the two reds in the bird's breast, above, are two completely different fabrics.

Mavis hid fun things in the quilting. She gave the binoculars the 'brand name' "I C You", as a play on the whole idea of the quilt - who is watching whom?

This quilt has so much to commend it. The creative birds, the concept, the surprises, all the things I love best about quilts. It's why I tell quiltmakers to make their own quilts. Wonderful things happen when you do.

Congratulations Mavis!

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

 

Crowing About It

 

The first student bird quilt, Crowing About It, is finished. I've been sewing the binding on it while catching up on Sanditon, Top Chef and The Marvelous Mrs Maisel. This is the only place in the house that I can hang it, and it gets terrible light, so this isn't a very good photo, but I PROMISE to take outdoor beauty shots when the weather improves.

Whenever that is!

In The Meantime...

 

I never work on more than one quilt at a time. Now I've got TWO going simultaneously. AND I've got two STUCK. I am waiting for more fabric for each, so I am sewing the binding on the first student bird quilt, "Crowing About It."

Oopsie!

 

I'm in New England, and we got hit hard with a Nor'Easter on Tuesday. I elected to work from home, which was smart as the roads were just terrible. As it happened the powers that be decided to close the plant at noon because travel was so treacherous. So I got a real live Snow Day. I was glad I had sewn the binding on the Crowing About It quilt, because it meant I could sit on the couch and sew while I "watched" the BNP Paribus Open on TV. But then I started to fold the binding over I realized that I had not added a hanging sleeve to the quilt. OOPS!

I rummaged around the bin with the leftover backing fabric, and pulled out this, measured it all up and made the hanging sleeve.

Then I had to unsew the binding from the top edge of the quilt, slip the hanging sleeve between the binding and the quilt and pin it in place.

But before I could pin the binding over to the front of the quilt I heard a big WHOMPH!

A branch from a tree had broken and as it fell it brushed against my house and one end landed at the edge of my roof. It had been slowed down by the bushes nearby but it was still startling.

I pinned the binding over to the front of the quilt. NOW I am ready to sew it down.

Binding the Crowing About It Quilt

 

This is the fabric I chose to bind the first student bird quilt, "Crowing About It." 

Regular readers know I sew my binding to the back of my quilts, so I can do the finish on the front.

It's nice to have a quilt to work on when I "watch" television (Top Chef Season 20 started last week, and the Tournament of Champions IV is well underway) so I'm happy to finally get this quit to a point where I can be sewing while I watch TV.

Working my way around, mitering the corners...

Here I've joined the strips and sewn it all down.

I like to fold the binding over to the front and pin it all down before I start hand sewing it. But that will happen later.

Crowing About It

 

This is the first student bird quilt, quilted. I was finally able to connect with Janet-Lee Santeusanio and pick up this quilt. Both of us have been really busy since I dropped this off last summer.

Once home I set out some fabrics to see what would be best as a binding.

So here are three options. I have decided which one I will use, but I will keep that under my hat for now. 🤣

These birds are birds inspired from my tutorial, Lynne’s Liberated Birds, which you can get on Etsy. It’s an instant download, so you can get started right away. These birds were not made by me. These were made by students/ readers / customers, who took the ideas in the tutorial and made variations on the “standard” bird. I feel this will be a terrific quilt to show students.

I may have had a title for it back when, but my Mom accidentally named it while we were visiting Janet-Lee over the weekend. “Your students will be crowing that their birds are in you quilt,” she observed.

“MA! I love it. You just named the quilt! CROWING ABOUT IT!”

The Hutch Begins its Transformation

 

You know how you look at the same thing every day for years and then all of a sudden one day you look at it and say, "NOPE. I'm sick of it. Gonna change it"?

Well, this was the hutch, before.

I've already shown you how I got rid of the dishes I no longer used, and reorganized with some of my favorite things. I had decided to paint the interior of the hutch, above. But it would need a big chunk of time.

I took the doors down, and removed the hinges. Then I primed the facing. I'll have to remove the contents before I paint the insides, and to do that I'd have to get the doors out of the way.

So after I cleared my dining room table and covered it with a tarp, I removed the doors, removed the hardware and washed the glass. Then I added blue painter's tape on the glass...

Then I painted them with primer. Tomorrow I'll flip them over and prime the insides, and after that I'll make a trip to the big box hardware store for paint for the top coat. When I've applied the two coats of the top paint to each side, I'll set the doors aside, and empty the contents of the hutch itself, and then I'll start painting the inside.

Actually I may not wait that long. I just have to figure out where to put the contents of the hutch so it won't be spread out all over the house. Then I'll paint the insides. I figure it will be messy and the air might turn blue, but I'm on stay-cation for the next couple of weeks. I'll be watching the tennis in New York, as I do each year, so I'll have time to complete the job.

And I'll be picking up the first bird quilt from Janet Lee, my long arm quilter, and I'll be working getting that bound as well, and I'll be putting the second one together, so I'm excited about that too.

The Second Bird Quilt

 

In my bird quilts I like to arrange the birds as if they are talking to each other. As if they are discovering things they have in common. I try to make about the same number of right facing birds as I do left facing birds.

But I couldn't control how many birds I got from students and customers. The vast majority of them face left. And I never expected the degree of customization I received. So I wanted to spread the "unique" birds around.

Now before you all think this is totally beyond you, and that birds HAVE to be unique, and different sizes, etc., check out the quilt that Joan made, below:

Joan made 34 birds almost exactly alike. She wasn't interested in fussy cutting wings. She just used the fabrics she had on hand. Aside from the squirrel at the upper right, there isn't anything unusual about this quilt.

Except the arrangement, while seemingly staid and boring, is really quite lovely. This arrangement sets up a very nice rhythm, and the resulting negative spaces around the birds really sings. 

I find it so interesting, I would never have had an odd number of birds in one row, because I would have thought it wasn't "balanced." Well, it just goes to show you I know NOTHING! These birds don't have fancy fussy cut wings. Yet this quilt doesn't suffer AT ALL! This is a very beautiful quilt, and anybody who can make a bird (and that means you), can likewise use this arrangement and produce a very beautiful quilt. I look at Joan's quilt and I think that sometimes in my quest for something (I don't know what...) I am looking in the wrong place. 

This quilt is a perfect example of "I am pretty sure the idea would be boring, so I'm not even going to try it... but I would be WRONG." In other words, it is very easy for ALL OF US to overthink things.

This may be the final layout of the Second Bird Quilt, but I am not sure. I added a right facing bird of my own and that might make me happy. We shall see.

But I think in the future I might make a bird quilt and use Joan's arrangement idea (except I'll leave out the squirrel.)

You too, can make birds. They are lots of fun, and kind of addictive. Joan (the same Joan above) said she bought the tutorial and decided to try one out so see how it would go together. Next thing she knew she had made 34... You can get my tutorial for making birds here, at my Etsy shop. It's an instant download so you can get started right away.

The Class of 31

 

I figured out how to put the rest of the birds together. Here I am assembling the last panel.

This is the result of the photo above. Now I just have to add the tall bird with the knobby knees at the far right.

This is it! The first Student Bird quilt flimsy is complete. There are 31 birds in this one, so it's name for now is "The Class of 31," unless somebody comes up with a  better idea.

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

One Seam at a Time

 

I got to this point and realized I sewed the lavender bird to the top panel (underneath the small orange bird) too soon. So I took it apart. The problem is the last seam should be one going to an outer edge. Much less fiddly. 

I fixed it, and then sewed all the panels together. The end result is exactly the same but it was easier to do.

Good news: the water heater was covered by the warranty and all I had to pay was the cost of installation. (phew!)

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

The Big Plan

 Now that you have seen how I put the birds together into what I call "panels," this is how I plan to assemble the rest of the quilt.

This is another section.

And here it is all sewn together. Things change, as you can tell. I decided I wanted the two little birds to look connected, so I set them on the same level.

 

I might work on this one next.

 

Here is this one all sewn up. I decided I didn't want the two birds on the left to look like they were too romantically involved (if they face each other and their beaks touch, I think of that as kissing), so I put a bit of space between them.
 

 

This is the chunk on the middle right. I haven't quite decided how to put the top part of this one together yet.

 

This is the big piece at the bottom.

And oh, by the way. None of this is cast in stone. I may change my mind or get a better idea as I work, but this is the plan for now. We shall see how it goes.

Is it hard? No. Is it fussy? Yes. Is it worth it? Well, if you want to make a great quilt, I think it is.

 

 

The birds in the photos above were made by students and customers who bought my tutorial on Etsy. As you can see, many of them made some modifications, and they did that all on their own. If they can do it, you can do it too. There's a hummingbird up there. There's an ostrich. There's a squatting bird. Hell, there's even a bird juggling asterisk flowers. Did I explain how to do any of that in the bird tutorial? Nope. But I do explain everything else, and more importantly, I give you the confidence to succeed and jump out on your own and make your own unique birds. I am not interested in sixteen million exact duplicates. I like them unique and individual. I bet you will too.

 

Left & Right

 

I received a lot of left facing birds, and when I started to lay out the first bird quilt, I had too many left facing birds. All the birds facing left draw the viewer's eye to the left of the quilt, and right out of it. That isn't good design. The bird above was great in the upper left corner, but he faced out of the quilt, and I needed to bring the viewer's eye back into the quilt.

So I made this bird, facing right, using the original bird as inspiration. I did not have the same fabrics, but I chose fabrics that were as similar as I could find in my stash.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

Here's another left facing bird who was facing the wrong way for where I needed this bird to go.

The wing in the original bird is black, but I don't have solids, so I chose this black fabric with a few gold dots. I also selected a batik print as the replacement for the breast.

I tried to make my replacement birds as close to the inspiration birds as I could,

 

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

Student Bird Quilt #1

 

I've decided to break up the student birds into two quilts. This way the quilts will be able to fit to hang in smaller spaces for display, and it when I teach a class, there will be two quilts in the room instead of just one.

Putting disparate blocks together is tricky. It's adding fabrics to one side or another, trimming the blocks so the edges are straight and square, inserting the occasional set-in square and basically winging it. 

Here is the top third of the quilt in process.

Here I have used red ribbon to show the way I'll put this quilt together.

 

Stay tuned.

All the birds in the student birds quilt are made by folks who bought my tutorial and made their own birds. You can make birds too. You can get my tutorial here, at my Etsy shop. These birds are made without patterns or traditional templates, and they are not paper pieced. 

My bird tutorial makes a basic bird like the one above, but a lot of the birds in the quilt above were customized by my customers/students without any help from me. You can do it too!