Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Snowbird Quilt Reveal


I had so much fun making the Infinity quilt, I went straight into making another quilt.  I was looking for something that would use the same fabric as the Infinity quilt. This time, I found a free pattern from the Quilter's Newsletter website. It's called Textured Tweety's Snowflake and is designed by Wendy Butler Burns. It looked like a quick and simple quilt that would look great with the Infinity quilt, and use some of its scraps, even though it did require a dig through the scrap bin for other fabric.


I already had a snowflake on the fusible from a coaster I made using a Patrick Lose pattern, so I used that instead of the one in the Quilter's Newsletter pattern. I used a decorative stitch to quilt it.  I love that it looks like ice crystals, and that it is easy to add since sewing over ice crystals still looks like ice crystals. I really like the border fabric - it is so versatile. It can be used to represent sky or water or ice. The tan background was probably made to represent coffee, but it also has a snowlike quality to it. 


The bird is secured / quilted with a feather stitch and the branch is stitched with a snowflake / asterisk stitch.  The wing is a rose fabric but you can't tell that it is a rose.  Just a little hidden promise of spring and summer.  The border uses a stitch that looks like bird feet (claws) but you can't see it much in the busy fabric. 

I printed the pattern landscape instead of portrait so I lost the branch pattern and decided to cut my own freeform. Surely I can do a branch.  It looks like an alligator to me, or is that a crocodile?  I like the motif quilting stitches in the pattern.  Now that I have a reverse button that works and a fix button which secures the stitches, I can do motifs again.


Here's what it looks like on the bulletin board. The Snowbird Quilt shares the red and white fabrics from the Infinity quilt. The red from the bird, the tan background and the blue border probably also share fabric with other quilts, but unfortunately I can't remember where they were used.  I know I've planned on using them for many different projects, but I'm not sure I actually did use them anywhere else.



The back uses some shiny snowflake fabric.  I had leftover fused fabric, and cut out another bird for the back that is being used for the label. The beak is more of that rose fabric.  The back is pretty enough to be used as a front too.  This quilt was a lot of fun to make.




And the snowbird really did bring snow with her. Once I finished the quilt, I went for a walk, and lo and behold it was snowing - a hard cold snow.  This is today's snow - it is a bit more substantial and softer.

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