Birds in the Air ~ From Bald Eagle to Buzzard

The Greenville Modern Quilt Guild issued a Birds in the Air challenge back in April with the entries due at the August 2017 meeting.  After much shuffling, rearranging and resizing of the traditional Birds in the Air quilt block in EQ7, I finally decided on this layout which became the final quilt.

The Challenge Rules

1.  Interpret the Birds in the Air quilt block into a design of your choosing.  We were directed to the Birds in the Air tutorial by Nicole at Mama Loves Quilts.

Image by Nicole at Mama Loves Quilts

2.  Size not to exceed 36" on any side (qualifies for the small quilts category at QuiltCon)

3.  Incorporate at least three (3) of the eight modern design elements listed below:

• bright/graphic color palette
• negative space ✅
• minimalism
• no borders ✅
• improvisational piecing
• alternate grid work
• asymmetry
• exaggerated scale ✅

The Design

Coming up with a design was the hardest part since I had to incorporate 3 of the modern elements.   If I used exaggerated scale, I would automatically have another element, negative space.  And a design with no borders would take care of a 3rd element.

I decided to break down the triangles into smaller Birds in the Air blocks.  Think about the the math sequence 1, 3, 9, 27, 81 and so on where each sequential number is multiplied by 3.

For designing in EQ7 it was easier to to create the largest white triangle from HSTs and plain squares but that's not how it was pieced.  The triangle was created by cutting one large triangle on the diagonal.  I didn't want any seam lines to interfere with the quilting.

This photo was taken the Tuesday before the Saturday deadline of August 12th.  The deadline was quickly approaching.

The Fabrics

I used only Hoffman Indah Batiks in the construction.  The gray print is Stitches in Pebble.  The white is even an Indah Solid in Zinc.  In each of the nine smallest Birds in the Air blocks I added  one colored triangle for a little variation.

The Quilting

I shouldn't have said coming up with the design was the hardest part because choosing a quilting design(s) is by far the biggest challenge for me with any project.  Here's a rough sketch of what I decided to quilt.

I decided to outline the small triangles which finished at 1 1/4" by stitching in the ditch as much as possible.  For the medium size triangles I quilted one roof top design in each triangle. I like how a chevron design was created across the blocks.

I created more birds in the air by ghost quilting in the negative space.  I did the dense back and forth free hand and it shows.

I was originally planning to quilt only the parallel lines in the large triangles but when I was through, it was a little sparse.  So now what?  Well, since this was a Birds in the Air challenge I had the idea of quilting bird names on some of the lines.  After all, I had some experience with quilting letters when I made the Cursive is a Fading Art quilt.

Like with Cursive, I tried to choose bird names without t's and i's but I had too many spaces to fill.  Some of the bird names are raven, bluebird, owl, Carolina wren, hawk, pigeon, quail, cardinal, woodpecker, blackbird, bluebird, dove, blue jay and the list goes on.  I think there are 28 different names altogether.  I wrote out every single bird name using a water soluble marker.

  On alternating lines, I quilted loops.

You can barely make it out here, but the first bird name I quilted was bald eagle.

And the very last bird name quilted was buzzard in the bottom corner.

As with most of my quilting, I used Aurifil 50 wt.  The white is 2024 and for the gray I used 2625 Arctic Ice which you can see in this instagram post along with the weekly block for The Quilter's Planner.

The Binding

Wanting to binding to be gray on two sides and white on the other two sides, I decided to give the No Tails binding method by Linda at Flourishing Palms a try.  It ended up being a little challenge of its own.

Since I definitely didn't want to cut off any of the points on those little birds on left and top sides, I made the binding very narrow.  I cut the binding strips 7/8" wide.  I think that alone contributed to the difficulty.  Turning those little corners were quite fiddly.

If you are a member of the Modern Quilt Guild, Linda did a webinar titled No-Tails Binding Mitered Corners by Machine.  It's available under resources of the Community tab on the MQG website.

I finished sewing down the binding by hand on the morning of the challenge deadline and still hadn't titled the quilt.  It wasn't until later that I decided on the name From Bald Eagle to Buzzard.  I was thrilled to win 2nd place in the challenge and you can see all of the Birds in the Air challenge quilts HERE at the Greenville MQG.

When Yvonne at Quilting Jetgirl wrote about the MQG charity quilt she and the Blue Moon Quilters were working on, I couldn't help but notice the similarities in our designs.

Quilt Stats

• Finished size: 34" x 34" 
• Pattern: Original design using the traditional Birds in the Air quilt block
• Fabrics: Hoffman Indah batiks
• Thread: Aurifil 50 wt. in White 2024 and Arctic Ice 2625
• Quilting design: stitch in the ditch, straight lines, cursive writing and loops
• Batting: 100% Cotton Warm & White by the Warm Company
• Completed: August 2017

Linking this week to:

Needle and Thread Thursday

Finish It Up Friday

Whoop Whoop Friday

Show off Saturday