Orange Birds

I didn’t get too much orange sewing done this week because I really didn’t start on it until Thursday. My energies prior to that were focused on garden veggies and finishing a quilt. First, the vegetables. Bruce, for some reason, thought it would be a good idea to plant three yellow crookneck squash plants. Suffice it to say that besides eating it and freezing it, we’ve been passing it out to the neighbors and I’ve been taking a basketful (15-20 pieces) to Weight Watchers every week. Our WW leader even called me the Vegetable Queen, lol.

And speaking of Bruce, he loved his Groovy Guitars quilt that I finished this week. Thank goodness and hallelujah!!  You can read about it in the previous post, or click HERE. But I’m ready to talk about sewing on my orange scraps, and there are a lot of others who are too. You can check out their work at Rainbow Scrap Saturday over at Angela’s blog.

It’s been about 3 months since I’ve worked on my birds. That’s because the colors I’ve chosen are that of the focus fabric; rich blues, greens, pink, yellow and orange. My notes told me I needed to make four of these 10” (finished size) birds; two facing right and two facing left. I cut the pieces on Thursday and then set out to work yesterday, listening to my Aretha Franklin tunes in memoriam of the Queen of Soul.

Each bird is different, not only in the fabrics, but in little piecing variations. The pattern I’m using is my own adaptation of Margot Langedoc’s Feathers pattern, which makes an 8” block and a free online pattern here, which makes a 12” block. My birds are 10” (finished size) and have a rounded wing (suggestion from Sally) and a haphazard way of adding partial triangles at the bottom of the forewing.

When I do birds of a given color, some are all in that color, like the two orange birds above, and some are mixture of two of the main colors. I’m hoping this will help tie all them together. The bird below is the first one in which I used four different fabrics.

I will probably have one or two leftover birds (that sounds funny....) and if so, will use them on the back.

Here are all the birds of an orange feather, flocking together as they do.

And then I sewed up a couple more of the Irish Chain (“lattice” blocks) so I could lay out all the different colored birds. More than anything, I wanted to see how the spacing around the birds worked with the lattice blocks.

Hmmm.... yes, I like it. No, I LOVE it!!  There will be a total of 31 bird blocks and 32 lattice blocks. Next time we have a blue month, I’ll be sewing up the remaining 28 lattice blocks. And there are lots more blue (7) and green (4) birds to sew. This is on track to become a 4th quarter finish, at least the top.

Oh, and we had some orange interest in the garden this week. Sunflowers!!

These were taken earlier in the week; we have at least 5-6 open now and they’re always covered in bees. YAY!

We also have lots of pumpkins (large and Jack-be-Littles) turning orange already. I guess they want to match the still-smoky skies.

The front planters are looking pretty good these days....

And the flower pots along the front walkway are really doing well. You can click to enlarge... That little rose tree was planted just this spring and has already had two flushes of yellow roses. I’m sure we’ll have at least one more before the cool weather sets in.

Also new this year was this coneflower. We used to have these all over the garden, but the last few years they went away. So I’ve been adding them back in here and there.

Pretend you don’t see the weeds in the above picture. It’s been too hot and smoky to work outside any longer than necessary (to pick vegetables). Today our lawn guys, who are also arborists, are coming to trim the apricot tree, a couple trees in front, remove a few problem things and that da** umbrella tree that you can see two pictures up beyond the flower pots.  My roses and hydrangeas, among other plantings there, need more space and sunshine.  After they’re gone, I’ll be making plum jam and a huge triple batch of chili, using garden tomatoes, onions, peppers, etc.  And then I can sew all afternoon!!