Tweet! The bird's Glen

Imagine... spring sunlight through the budding trees... birds gathering again, life restarting for flora and fauna.
Remember the watercolor squares I picked up at the Boulder Quilt guild free table??  A while back I arranged them, sewed them together, then let them rest.

This week I picked them up and appliqued the tree by just cutting out with pinking sheers laying it in place, using a glue stick to baste, then sewing it with a straight stitch to be gone over in the quilt process. I love a bit of a raised edge, so I'll heavily quilt it and let the very edges lift.

Look at the borders. I thought not to border it but changed my mind and found in the small amount of fabric available, this multi colored batik, perfect for three sides. I carefully cut strips from pattern and color I liked. The burst of gold along the bottom of the tree brings your eye to the tree.

since this is a scene, I used a blue-purple with some of the same colors for the top (sky) border.
I tried and discarded many batiks, even cutting strips from some, before settling on these and I just love them!!! This quilt is on the portable design wall made of a packing box and batting, at the top of the stairs. I saw it each time I went up and that helped to make choices.
Aren't the squares lovely together? At first I thought there were too many plain ones but this arrangement leads my eye around the piece, and is very organic, and spring like.

I did make sure to measure carefully through the center for border length as watercolor quilts can stretch and wave if you're not careful. I also fussy cut the strips to get the color placement just so.

Then my mind turned to the birds... I knew I wanted to paint them, then decided to use oil pastels...

 My friend Cindy suggested doing samples on muslin before launching into the actual sewn background. Brilliant! So I pulled out the three types of oil pastels I like using, and the samples told me three things. (I chose to reverse the smaller bird stencil to see if it worked better in my composition)

I liked the gelatos the best for color and blending

1. color and type of crayon I preferred in this project
2. tested by heat setting, and washing to test for colorfastness... all passed the test
3. placement of the birds...

Sweet!

with a black pen outline

With three birds...

I don't know....

As it turns out, I jumped in after all this experimentation and painted two on the background.

That required taking a breath, and leaping!

It's always a bit scary to add an element that cannot be removed but I trusted my supplies, and knew the stencils were just the start. I removed the stencils and continued to color and blend each bird til I had removed the stencil lines and somewhat covered the prints in the fabrics

Pretty!!! Love!!!
I can just imagine it with lovely threadwork in the quilting... baby blue rayon? Gold rayon? 

Lovely! How delicate! I like the prints showing through a bit for texture. And the little hint of a twig stenciled on too. It was hard to position the top bird not to cover up the leaves already there.

Oh so sweet! I just love it. It was like, well beauty is healing.  I painted it with fabric then got to paint it with paint too!
It is so happy isn't it? Can't you see all the threadwork giving the bark definition?
I may add in the last bird, but I may leave these two. I will not add in the word, as the design is enough.

I used to date an art dealer, and he said once, "It takes two people to make art, one to do the work and one to tell her to stop now"

I am telling myself to stop now

24" X 32"

Time to quilt!

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