I have always been interested in animals. While my middle school contemporaries plastered their walls with posters of boy bands, mine were covered in whale posters and National Geographic animal photos. (But don’t fret, I was listening to awesome music like Nirvana in my fauna filled room.) When I was in school, we studied animals during science class and checked out our own books at the library for book reports. If I have one childhood brag, it is that I surely read every single book about whales from my city library system. Some multiple times. Naturally I also wanted to be a marine biologist, even though I lived 1,000 plus miles inland from an ocean. As an adult, my passion for animals remains, despite that I never became a marine biologist.
Although I am fortunate enough to have experienced some truly awesome animal sights, such as dolphins next to my kayak, bighorn sheep rutting in canyons, a sandhill crane migration and monkeys in the wild, my favorite sightings are of everyday creatures. I am delighted to see a covey of quail on the hiking trail, or bald eagles swooping over water. Turtles sunning themselves on logs never fail to amuse me. And elk are really cool, too. In fact, my favorite birds as an adult are really quite common sightings in the American West. I enjoy a good bird watching session, but do not even remotely consider myself a “birder”. I simply love to see animals in their natural environments.
Isn’t it fun how a particular animal can remind us of a person? My beloved paternal grandmother was very into cardinals, or “red birds” as she called them. Just like a signature color, red birds were Grandma’s signature animal. As such, there were many cardinal home decorations, and even clothes, so that now anytime I see a red bird, I am reminded of her. I know folks who mention a favorite animal once and then spend years bombarded with, for example, elephant paraphernalia. My Grandma’s affinity for the red bird was more than that. She genuinely liked cardinals and lamented that they were not a species found in her urban environment. I’m speculating here, but I think part of her affection was that the red birds reminded her of simpler times on her midwestern family farm where they were regular visitors.
Several years ago I purchased a small curated fat quarter bundle of Charley Harper winter prints. For those unfamiliar with Charley Harper, he was a midcentury artist who specialized in animal depictions based upon his field research. This is a very simplistic distillation of his creations, so I encourage anyone who loves animals to check out his art. There has been a recent renaissance of his work and it is now widely available in prints and all sorts of commodities. In my fabric bundle, I was so pleasantly surprised at how many of the prints contained Grandma’s red birds. Yet as excited as I was about the fabric in the beginning, it was deemed too special and stashed away. For probably 7 years.
The bundle was recently unearthed in my cupboard and I decided it was fine time that this precious fabric became a useful blanket. Even though I love the fabrics because of who they remind me of, I knew the perfect recipient for the material. This quilt was made for my paternal aunt because the birds are reminiscent of our matriarch. My aunt spends a lot of time with her grandchildren, so my hope is that the quilt is a means for them to learn about the great-grandmother they never met. In addition to being, you know, an actual, usable blanket. In typical Quiltunes “wing-it” fashion, I did not have a design in mind when I set out to create, other than to prominently feature the bird prints. My original design was waaayyy too simplistic: a 12.5” x 12.5” square of each print sewed with a solid blue border to each block. Nope that was super boring. So I ripped it all apart and started over. Who’s afraid of their seam ripper? Not me! With the help of a technical engineer (aka my beloved spouse), we devised these half-square triangles borders to give the quilt some pizazz. Once the HST border was added, the intent was to then add sashing between the blocks as a buffer. However, that all changed once I hung up the finished blocks on my design wall and saw the cool pattern that emerged from the, uh, smooshing of the HST borders. Now THIS is appropriately funky! There are moments when I’m in my sewing room and something works out so well that I feel as if a beam of sunshine has burst through the ceiling to shine upon me. An “aha moment” in modern parlance. Since this quilt was devised without a tried and true tested pattern, I did not worry about the areas where the points did not align perfectly. This is a blanket that is going to be used and washed, not judged in a quilt show. There will be dogs lying on top and forts built with it. So in the spirit of utility over perfection, I finished the quilt with stipple quilting on my domestic machine. Perfect, it is not. Warm and full of brightness it is. An unsubtle nod to the continued memory of a phenomenal woman.
This quilt continues my recent tradition of using only materials (batting excluded) that was already on hand. I haven’t tallied up how many quilts I’ve made in this manner, but I’ll venture to guess it is close to 10. It feels very freeing, and never limiting, to use up what I already own. I adore the inherent creative element and surprise elements by making quilts this way. As I’ve said before, working within these constraints, if one really can really call it that, I wind up creating unique quilts with patterns and colors that perhaps I would not have otherwise.
Along with using what materials I have in my sewing room, I also listen to all of the music that I own. Some much more frequently than others. My CD collection is incredibly diverse with discs spanning over 30 years of listening. I have no idea how long ago I last tuned in to Blackalicious’ Blazing Arrow album, but something drew me to choose this while piecing the quilt. And the record did not disappoint. There is an incredible, and frequent, overlap in my world when the right song is played at the right moment. So as my stereo busted out the song “First in Flight”, while I was sewing a bird quilt (!!!), it felt as if all was meant to be.
In a world where your attention is a commodity and is pulled in (what feels to me like) a million different directions, focusing and paying attention is my lifesaver. Whether that be enjoying a hobby undisturbed, or looking at birds, or listening to music, or just taking some quiet time for crying out loud, presence is important. This quilt reminded me of just that: how wonderful it feels to be focused. Also in a world that glorifies constant movement and travel, observing your own surroundings for moments of awe is a radical act too. I loved making this quilt and remembering my precious Grandma. Now it is out in the world to honor her memory. Unfortunately I could not make the quilt smell like brownies (seriously, the woman always smelled like cookies) but I believe I captured her essence in this humble little bird blanket.
Quiltunes 