Feathering a Nest

 In my ongoing effort to put older prints from my stash to good use I recently pulled out a set of four panels intended for pillows - or so I assume. 

These were printed by the Rose & Hubble Company. I think the birds are meant to be an English variety of finch or sparrow. For simplicity's sake I'm calling them sparrows. The first decision I made was to separate the four panels and then only use two to begin a new quilt top. Of course, when I trimmed the panels they wouldn't fit dimensions that would be easy to work with. That made my first step framing them to a more comfortable size.

I chose to keep to yellow and blues for this project. My intention is to send this on for the benefit of Ukrainian refugees when it's complete. It was hard to match the colors in the panels given that they're from the 1990's. My hope is that in the end all the blues and yellows will work together harmoniously.

I spent time making flying geese to surround the panels. It seemed appropriate to stick with a bird theme. 😉

That lighter blue isn't quite so bright in person. I got a bit stuck at this point, wondering what to do next. I didn't have much of anything in the Parts Dept. that would work. Eventually I hit on the idea to make yellow and blue 6" Shoo-fly blocks.

But they weren't enough on their own. So then I cut some strips of more blue prints - some old, some new - and built the blocks up to 9" chevron log cabin style. 

This was the setting I originally thought to use. It didn't really make me happy so I made some changes.

The next step will be to surround the whole thing with a new print I purchased specifically for the purpose. It's a blue ground with tiny bouquets of flowers with accents of yellow. Three inch wide border strips will bring the top up to 60" square. I just have to get the fabric laundered and cut now that it has arrived. 😊