Birds of The Box

    Just over a week ago, I was given a box of material. As I was pulling out the big pieces of material, pieces of a flock of embroidered birds started to come out.  What ended up in total 38 state bird embroidered blocks.

The blocks were honestly amazing.  Each carefully embroidered with the states bird, the states name and initials and the painted with some type of fabric paint. They were all stained and crumbled up.  Sadly, I knew these blocks took a lot of someone else’s time. A few days later the challenge was announced of”Birds in The Air”.  I was thinking of all kinds of flying geese designs, but my mind kept going to these blocks.  I decided they might forever live in a box if I don’t do something with them now. 

I went home and soaked a block overnight in Oxiclean.  There was no running of colors and the block came out pretty clean! So I decided to do them all. So on Tuesday morning, I took them out and start the process of drying and ironing.  Sadly, due to the birds of different sizes and the holes and disfigured fabric, I had to cut the squares down smaller then I wanted to 7.5inches. 

I decided to set the quilt on point, since most of the birds were already on an angle. If I did 6 across and 6 down, it left 2 extra blocks. But I couldn’t leave any out.  Instead, I added 4 additional white on white blocks.  Laid these across the center.  Now I wish I would’ve have put them in the corners, but of course that’s an after thought. 

Because the blocks were stretched when embroidered, they were not the easiest to sew up straight.  But otherwise, they pieced together awesome!  I haven’t done a quilt on point in a long time, much less come up with the measurements for the side/corner pieces.  I found several blogs with graphs that made each, cut and calculation easy. Which made the layout and piecing Cake work. 

I started and just about finished the quilt layout at home, then took it to a retreat to finish. The red fabric I put in it was from my stash. I wanted the birds to pop.  The red tone on tone  matched the red birds.  Just simple. The backing was another fabric from the box, a yellow floral. 

I did not have my newer nice industrial Juki to quilt it.  Instead I had to borrow back my old Juki at the retreat. My quilting plan was not completely ideal when I started to quilt it, but I am one of those, once I start it, it’s gonna finish that way people. I used a type of embellished continuous curves in the red, then some basic meandering in the bird blocks. I recommend the blocks to be smaller for the continuous curves with Free motion quilting. The binding is a plain old red. 

I finished this quilt at the lake at my sewing groups first quilt retreat. These ladies saw the blocks before I cleaned them and squared them.  I soon learned that there is a bird lover in the crowd! Someone who may receive these blocks as a quilt! 

Pictures are all taken at Somerset Point at the Lake.  The cabins are where we stayed for our mini retreat!