Quilting for the Birds

Back in my student days (which went on forever it seemed) I saw this PBS special about an artist who painted birds. He had this gorgeous studio surrounded by woods with beautiful natural light coming from multiple windows. I was enchanted. At the time I was spending 12 hours a day in a windowless basement lab where everything went wrong more often than not. I remember thinking to myself, that’s what I want to do, be an artist who painted birds. The only problem was, I couldn’t paint. I also knew nothing about birds. Luckily the University I was at had an ornithology lab so I did learn a few things about birds while I was there. I’m still working on the artist part…minus the painting …which I still can’t do.

So the other day I was having breakfast with my friend Sue (more about her later) who runs EFTA (more about this later) when she told me that her current poster for her organization was designed to look like a quilt. I don’t know how exactly it came up but the idea is; why not make it into a quilt that can be raffled to raise money. Well, let me tell you, my little brain started working over time. Maybe I can’t paint with paint but I CAN paint with thread and fabric. And I know other people who can too.

To make a long story short; some other quilters and I are working on turning this gorgeous poster into a quilt that can be raffled to raise money for EFTA. So, in addition to tutorials for Florabunda I’m going to do a few on this process as well. If you know anyone who is interested in thread painting and nature quilts send them my way.

Other News: I’m going to work on getting the blogroll up over the weekend. Thanks for sending my your blogs. I’m so impressed.

Comments

[Dana D]

I'd bet you could sell patterns to raise additional money - it's an awesome poster!

Dana

[Digna]

Hi Erin,

That will be an amazing bird-poster-quilt!!!And it certainly will raise a lot of money!I'm looking forward to photo's of your progress (as I'm looking forward to the next Florabunda block ;D).

Digna
(Netherlands)

[Carla]

You have my attention. Looking forward to see what happens with this project. It sounds so much fun.

[Tree]

This will be an amazing quilt, what a fun project - good luck.