4 Calling Birds

To continue the 12 days of Christmas (not in any specific order, mind you), I am going to present the 4 Calling Birds. (I actually should have made 2 Turtle Doves, I know....but I am having a heck of a time drawing turtles....sorry! I'll keep working on it....promise!!)

If you've been visiting my flickr stream you might have noticed that his mini started off like this:

That was quickly scribbled on a 6x9 sheet of my spiral notebook that I use for grocery lists....(now you know what's more important! LOL) I could hardly make something out of that though, so after being posted on my refrigerator for a few days, I transferred the idea onto something workable:

At this point I really considered doing applique, but after a while decided that the whole 12 days should be the same and since I did "peacock" and "three hens" in crayon, I should continue with that medium. Besides, that goes lots faster for me now. With applique, it seems I have to audition tons of fabrics to get them just right. With crayons, it's just a matter of testing colors on a separate piece of fabric.

As I've explained before, I transferred the image to fabric (cut a bit bigger than my pattern), backed it with freezer paper for stability and colored away:

If you try this process yourself, please don't get discouraged at the image right after you're done coloring. It really doesn't look like much at this stage, but it does get better after it continues, so be patient.

Here, you can see it after quilting, where I was doing the eyes. Nothing like a good poke in the eye, I say! LOL Note that the normal colonial knots were not on yet. (Yes, folks.....no french knots for this girl, although I might refer to them as french knots on occasion. Colonial knots are soooo much easier!!! And they never unknot!)

So here is the finished quilt. It ended up at 15 x 10 inches. I'm thinking a whole quilt made from these images would really be cute. Now, if I would only have time to finish the other 9 days!!

Just wait until you see "5 Golden Rings".......it will be a real hoot! I'm cracking myself up thinking of all these, believe me! I hope you chuckle as much as I do........until next time.....thanks for visiting!!!!