I finished an amazing bird themed quilt by the amazing Janeen of Quilt Art Design. She designs very intricate foundation paper-pieced patterns in a variety of themes from landscapes to animals to cars.

The quilt is called Bird Feeder, and it has many different kinds of birds, squirrels, and other critters. I thought that this quilt would be a great one for using up some of my solid colored scraps. Of course, some portions of the quilt required larger pieces of fabric, but I did pull all the fabrics from my stash. I *barely* had enough fabric for the sky background, and I really had to cut very efficiently to get it to work so I didn’t have a strange color change in the sky.

Here’s a look at one of my young quilt inspectors, learning how to properly inspect a quilt block:

This quilt is designed in a series of blocks, which I enjoyed sewing after work or on the weekends in manageable chunks. I use a design board and pin each finished block to the board before sewing them together. That way, I can verify that colors spanning multiple blocks are correct. It’s quite easy to get the different greens, for example, mixed up and have the wrong shade of green extending into the next block.

Look at this cute cardinal and ladybug! These are two blocks sewn together:

After several months of sewing these individual foundation paper-pieced blocks, I had them all ready to go. I’m debating on adding a border to look like a picture frame. The current size of this quilt top is approximately 40″ by 60″. What do you think – border or no?

Once I decide on if I should add a border or not, I need to quilt it. I think I’ll most likely custom quilt it rather than doing a hand-guided pantograph or straight line quilting.

Tweet, tweet!

~Jen