11.4 Birds In the Air

How can it already almost be the end of February? How could we be already be on the 4th Project Quilting Challenge? Only two challenges left to this season.

For some reason this year time seems to be flying by...like birds in the air!

Which is what our challenge this week is, creating a quilt project incorporating the quilt block "Birds in the Air", I honestly had no idea what a Birds in the Air quilt block was, so I had to use the good old Google and look it up. When I saw it, I fell in love, there is definitely a large Birds In the Air quilt somewhere in my quilting future.

Something I thought was interesting about the block is that there are many different variations and also different names for it, Flying Birds, Flock of Geese and Flight of Swallows.

You can also set the block in a number of different patterns to make a variety of designs. The block was used in quilts dating back to the civil war and one article I read talked about how it represented the abolitionists, but I wasn't able to find anything more than the one article so I don't really know how accurate that information is. 

I read an article online in the New York Times this past fall about the decline in bird numbers across the United States and Canada, a scary 29 percent since 1970. The article was fascinating and frightening at the same time. While 29 percent seems like a small amount, but it means in bird numbers there are 2.9 billion fewer birds today than there were 50 years ago. Sometimes I think we take birds for granted, they can be dirty pests when they get into our gardens, build nests in the garage, leave droppings everywhere. But can you imagine a world without them? Robins, Bluejays, Cardinals, even the common Sparrow are all threatened to be lost.

Since reading the article I have become an avid bird watcher, observing the flocks of birds that move through our area every year. Once you start looking you realize how true the article is. One of the main reasons for the loss of so many birds is the loss of habitat and use of chemicals. As our cities grow larger and spread out, something has to give and unfortunately we lose all those precious pieces of nature we can't afford to loose.

I decided I would make my birds to represent my favorite birds, the Partridge, Red Winged Black Bird, and the Western Meadowlark. 

During the winter months we will often see a small flock of partridge in our yard eating corn that has spilled from the feed pickup, I love watching them scurry about the yard and then at the slightest sound off they go!

 Last summer I saw something odd in the hayfield and upon closer inspection it was a little bunch of partridge who would pop their heads up, look around, then slither through the grass in a group, pop their little heads up again, and slither on. It was hilarious to watch, and one of those times you wish you had a video camera on hand!  I love their soft blended colors and so I chose a gray and brown batik and a light rose color to represent my partridge block.

There is something so joyful about any bird with a splash of bright red in its feathers. We have a stock dam which was built in low slough ground and when you walk along the road in the summer months there are blackbirds sitting on the fence and in the cattails calling out too each other. Their call sounds almost like they are saying "chit chit what weeee chit chit". When you hear it you definitely know its the red winged black bird making sure you know who is boss. It could be a very annoying sound if you had to listen to it for hours! I chose a dark blue black patterned batik and a bright red for my blackbird.

Everyone in western South Dakota  knows the Meadowlark and not the Robin is the official sign of spring, the day you hear it's unmistakable song and see that bright flash of yellow you know warmer days are just around the corner. I love sitting on the top of the ridge just north of our house where there is nothing but grass and sky and listening to the meadowlarks. I chose a grey/brown watercolor fabric and a bright yellow to represent my meadow lark.

I've never added a video to my blog, but I found this on my phone while searching for photos, it's a short little video of the "sea of grass" behind our house last June. The wind and the bugs drown out the birds, but  if you listen close you can hear a meadowlark.  I thought it would be fun to share a little bit of summer with you.

I found a blue batik that had silvery blue swirls in it which reminded me of a windy sky, I decided that would be the fabric I set my blocks on and use as the background in each block. 

 I wasn't really sure what I was going to make but thought maybe a small wall hanging or table runner. The 3 finished blocks are 8 x 8 inches square. I had some small triangle pieces left when I was done so I thought it would be fun to add some Flying Geese blocks, I love Flying Geese in the borders of quilts, and thought a border of Flying Geese would be neat, after making seventeen 1 x 1 1/2 inch flying geese, I decided there wasn't anything fun about that idea and just put what I had on the ends instead of all the way around. I ended up with a table runner!

This project I quilted on my longarm machine. I knew I wanted to quilt it with feathers and try to replicate the swirls in the blue background and there was no way I was going to try to do that on my regular sewing machine. I love quilting feathers but I need to be able to move the machine like a pencil if I want them to look like feathers and not some crazy birds nest! 

I used a gray and white feather print fabric I bought last year from Spoonflower as my backing fabric, then bound it with some of the blackbird batik.  Now I need to start digging through my stash and plotting my next Birds in the Air project.

When I was taking close up pictures of my feathers I had to laugh because the block turned a certain way reminded me of a fish.