Birds in Applique

I've posted about cats on quilts so to be fair here are some birds found in antique applique quilts. They are found in borders as with the blue and red bird above from a quilt in the collection of the New England Quilt Museum. See the whole quilt by clicking here on this Quilt Index file
http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=21-41-82

Karla Menaugh and I made a picture file of birds for our book Juniper & Mistletoe, which was really about trees, but we found several great birds in the trees.

Birds don't take much in the way of applique as in this border from a quilt dated 1842

Here's a minimalistic bird from a top about 1900

And a worn border from a mid-19th-century quilt

Birds often appeared in blocks

Especially in samplers

Scale seems to be a problem in this sampler with a giant bird in the bottom row.

Here's a lovely crib quilt with a variety of birds and bugs from an online auction.

See more by clicking on these links.

From the Quilt Index, New Jersey, probably from the 1860s, a sampler with some strange blocks and two bird blocks

http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=4A-7F-C66

Another Quilt Index photo, this one from the Connecticut Quilt Project, with some long-beaked birds towards the bottom
http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=47-7B-D9 

An Irish Chain with birds in the alternate blocks
http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=4B-82-391

From the International Quilt Study Center & Museum, a fairly recent quilt by Sarah Mary Taylor, #2005.060.0001
http://cdn.firespring.com/images/197ccef6-5f11-487e-9fa4-b5ccbab67938.jpg

Dealer Stella Rubin has an unusual 19th century example

http://www.stellarubinantiques.com/items/677403/enlargement677403sra.html

And for more about our book Juniper & Mistletoe click here

https://www.pickledishstore.com/productDetail.php?PID=1143 

Juniper and Mistletoe

Karla Menaugh and I are sending a new book to the printer this week. It's from Star Books---a block of the month applique design called Juniper and Mistletoe: A Forest of Applique.

It started as a pattern called A Festival of Trees for our Sunflower Pattern Co-operative but once Karla moved 750 miles away we could never get organized enough to do much with it. Several shops sold kits for a few years so we decided we'd publish the pattern as a book because we had so many great samples.

Karla picked out trees and birds from antique quilts and I drew them up. She designed the quilt, machine appliqued the trees and wrote directions for her techniques. I wrote about trees. My favorite quote is one from Willa Cather:

"I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do."

We collected several quilts, among them one stitched by Megan Johnson shown here in a behind-the-scenes view of a Star photography session.

Photographer Aaron Leimkuehler has built a wall that we can pin the quilts to rather than hanging them from a rod. Then editor Jenifer Dick and Aaron steamed all the wrinkles out that the poor quilt acquired in its FedEx trip across the country. We can make the quilts look remarkably flat----not that Megan's quilt WASN'T flat. My job was to sit in a chair and say---"A little up on the left."

Now that I have insulted everyone –Megan by implying her quilt wasn't flat, and Jenifer and Aaron by posting photos of their rears I will close for the day by telling you to click here to see more about Juniper and Mistletoe:

https://www.pickledishstore.com/productDetail.php?PID=1143

And Jenifer has a blog called Forty Two Quilts: her "year-long exploration into quilts, needlework and the slow descent into madness."

I think the last is due to her three adolescent and pre-adolescent children.

Click here to watch the descent:

http://milo-designs.blogspot.com/