Off the Wall Friday

I FINALLY have the facings on both of my "bird" quilts! Yeah!!!! I still want to do some beading on the "snow" of the second quilt. I AM looking for some help in naming these quilts; I'm terrible at that, and they both need names. The story of the quilts may help. If you didn't read the story behind the making of these quilts, here it is. (If you read that already in a previous post, skip the next paragraph.) Pictures of both quilts are underneath the story.

I'm trying to get two or three pieces finished in time for entry into a SAQA exhibit--"The View from Here: Quilts of the Ohio River Valley. SAQA members from Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio." The theme is "What the artists think of and see when they view their home and surroundings." Pieces must be "quilts" and may be representational or abstract. The work should relate to our local environment or what we see from where we live, our home, backyard, city, or town. I have given this a lot of thought and have come to the conclusion that one of my favorite things to do when I'm home (besides working on my artwork) is looking at the view out my window into my backyard to watch the birds at my bird feeder. I particularly like to watch the birds in the wintertime when there is a nice sheet of snow on the ground. I like the stark contrast between the whiteness of the snow and the color of the birds. One particular winter day, ALL the birds on the ground were "those ugly" blackbirds EXCEPT for one beautiful red cardinal. I was really aggravated that the "ugly" blackbirds were dominating the bird feeders, eating up all my seed, and weren't even pretty to look at. After I had ranted and raved, I got to feeling bad about maligning the blackbirds. I realized that they need to eat too, and they can't help the fact that they aren't "pretty." That revelation led me to think about this on a larger scale. People who aren't considered "pretty" by society often have needs that aren't met--simply because of their appearance. We all can't be pretty.

Be sure to click on the pictures to get a closer look. I think you'll be able to see the beads if you click on the detail picture of Quilt 1.

Quilt 1

 Detail of Quilt 1

 Quilt 2

 Detail of Quilt 2

If you have any name suggestions, please leave them in a comment or email me privately. (I DO LOVE comments!)

I have made a little progress on my hexagon English paper piecing project.

Last week's picture

This week's update

It is harder now to see the progress, because each "round" takes more hexagons! Last week (in a comment) I had someone ask me what size this piece measures. Well, at its longest point it now measures 18". Whew, this will be a LONG process. At least, for now, I'm still enjoying it.

Be sure to check out all the other updates to Off the Wall Friday on Nina-Marie's blog. You can click on the "Off the Wall" badge on the right-hand side of this page to get to that site.