Recently in Birds Category

I shared a photo of this a week ago when I was beginning the layout of this piece, and when the two youngest grandboys of the four stayed here for the week. Time to work on my project was hard to find. By the time I put them to bed and they slept, I was exhausted from the day. But, they left on Saturday, and I got to work on finishing this project which was due today. I was inspired by a card with the saying, "A friend remembers the words to your song when you forget"....I love those words and what they mean in a friendship.

When I started, I knew I wanted to use these Japanese fabrics for the background and borders. Once that was constructed, and the layers were sandwiched, I started making the two birds using scraps from my bins. I played with the placement of their legs to get just the right attitude. The flowers were cut from many different fabrics and quilted in place. The black and white fish in the left border is a piece of vintage Hoffman fabric.

The two birds and their long legs make me smile. It is a happy piece.

Time to work on my projects is fit in where I can around the busy schedule with the grandboys. Today I had a few hours alone, so I worked on my next piece which is due on the 15th. I spent days finding my voice in the prompt, and then a scramble to pull fabrics and seam the pieced parts. I cut out big flowers, first heaping them as a bouquet at the bottom, and then finding a balance as a chunky border on that great Kokka green background. I will move this and adjust that, add something new, change a line and add feathers. This is the beginning of it's 'becoming'....

This is one of our latest projects which I quilted yesterday. Using our pattern, A's Cranes, with a pirate theme, we created a happy kid's quilt. Choosing the perfect color for the binding is next.

Yesterday we had a day of sun with not a cloud in the sky. Islanders hoped it was a sign of warmer and drier days to come. I've had in my mind to photograph our totes together. As I got settled out on the deck, the totes arranged and perfect for a photo, the rain started. I did get the photo, and you can see drops on the deck. These Here2There totes have bird art and bird houses worked into the design. These are ready for upcoming shows and sales.

This is a peek at our collaborative tessellation quilt which is still in progress. Here I have just sewn on the binding. After this photo, I did more quilting on the shapes. I'll post photos of the finished quilt soon.

Other Here2There projects continue to be worked on both here and there. With each piece, Amy and I both say that it is the best one so far...and now, we have said that many times. But really, this one just may be best one...until the next one anyway.

It's Day 2 of my visit with Amy, and while we had a list of things we hoped to work on this week, already we've branched off and are working in the realm of the unexpected. We are sharing a work space...actually, we are sharing her work space...the table in her dining room....two sewing machines...and piles of inspiration all around us. We share one Ott-Lite and two rotary cutters. And in this shared space we bring our ideas together differently than by email or over the telephone. Our first project was a complete departure from what we have been doing...and it happened by accident, both of us willing to try someone really different. We have pushed ourselves and encouraged each other in many ways.

One of the early projects we worked on was started by Amy. She composed a wonderful curved fan of oranges and reds, and combined that with two framed bird sketches. The piece is breathtaking. And as we talked about how to finish it, we thought it would be fun to work in a round-robin where one of us would make the first border, and the other would follow with another border. I took the first border...and started with small rectangles of blacks and whites. On a whim, I started laying out tiny bits of remnants into bird house shapes...and soon I had a collection of tiny birdhouses framing Amy's pieced centerpiece. You can see it beginning to take shape in the photo, snapped early on in the process.

With so many shows on our calendar for the next few months, one of which spans almost two months, I've realized there's a reality to making holiday-inspired pieces. It has meant turning away a bit from the colors that sort of make up our personal shared palette. But, it's been fun to work with these a bit, and gradually, I've played with moving my bird-art pillow style into something more holiday-esque.

This pillow... it's much more casual than my bird art pillows, I think. It reminds me a good bit of the pillow I made myself this summer to fit a super cool and soft and cushy hull-filled pillow... a case I made for it all in pinks and oranges and with pink minkee on the back. I love that pillow for its casual feel and for the all-over patchwork design, versus just a central strip.

This holiday birdhouse pillow is different from the bird art pillows, and yet the Here2There birdhouse in the middle ties it firmly into our work. I love the way the work evolves and expands and circles around themes and looks and branches out a bit here and there and then comes back to the origin... and the process begins again.