A Fowl Quilt

 A couple of years ago my husband accompanied me to our local quilt shop. I was looking for specific things as I recall. Probably the shop had a sale going too. A set of panels caught my husband's eye, vintage-y looking illustrations of chickens on a white ground. He really likes the style of the artwork and has always had a thing for red, black, and white in combination. So the panels came home with us along with everything else. And then they waited for their turn to be put to use. Seems their time has come. 😊

It took a while to settle on a block pattern to use for filler between the panels. Hubby prefers less busy quilts, which can be a challenge for me. Of course the panels didn't cut to a convenient size. I framed them up to finish at 15" square and then made the alternate blocks out of patches that finish at three inches.

The rooster and hen block on the lower right came from a different piece of fabric, it was not one of the panels. It worked well with the panels though, and hubby had no objections to my using it. I couldn't bear the thought of using a single red for the alternate blocks. It was something of a struggle to make what I had go the distance. So much of what I have in my stash was too bright or too contemporary looking. Once I had this central bit I had to figure out how to make the quilt top wider and longer.

That gave me the opportunity to introduce a few more red prints. The black, by the way, is a chicken wire print I've had in my stash for nearly 20 years, I bet, just waiting for the right project. I will use more of it to bind the quilt.

Hubby is suitably pleased with the results. The quilt will finish at about 60" wide by 75" long. Neither of us are tall people.) It would be lovely to have this a finished quilt by the end of the month as we will be observing our 39th wedding anniversary then. I doubt that will actually happen, but it would be nice.  I'm sure hubby will be happy to receive it whenever it gets done. 😉