Bird Quilt by Where the Orchids Grow

I have to say I truly love today's feature by Leila from Where the Orchids Grow.  It's sweet, has meaning and is very unique.  Her shop is the same, original.  I really love the circle quilt tutorial she offers as well.  Make sure to stop by and say hi, but read her feature first!! :)

My bird quilt is finished yay!

A little info, this quilt measures approx 57" x 72" {143 x180 cm}

Made with Laurie Wisbrun's Tufted Tweets and some Katie Jump Rope by Denyse Schmidt for the binding. Solids are from my local market.

Hand quilted with vintage white embroidery floss, black silk and Sulky in grey.

This is my first {and certainly not my last} pieced backing. I drew more cages on the back used up some left over bits of tweets and added the white  and black because I'd ran out of grey. I love how it's turned out even though the design was quite random.

This quilt has a lot of 'me' in it.  Often I find inspiration in song lyrics, this happened to be the case with this quilt as well. The two lines that kept running through my head were "it's just an empty cage girl, if you kill the bird" from Crucify by Tori Amos. And "all your life you were only waiting for this moment to arrive"  from Paul McCartney's Blackbird. Once I saw Tufted Tweets I just knew they'd be perfect for my black 'ravens' and empty cages quilt.

Quilting is therapy for me, as I know it is for a lot of you out there as well. It offers me the opportunity to have a creative outlet for my emotions and things I go through in life. This last year has been a tough one for me and my battle's not over yet. Five years ago I ended an abusive relationship and it's been a long lasting battle to reclaim my own life and freedom. These birds and their empty cages symbolize these last five years for me.

It took me a while to figure out just how to quilt this but I decided to repeat one of the patterns in the fabric for the quilting {the connected oval shapes} and I added some vertical and horizontal stripes in various widths. 

This orange binding is completely out of my comfort zone! But I've been trying to overcome my fear of orange {I blame football for that!} and I'm really pleased with how it looks!

I love this bit on the back where the quilted cage overlaps the one I drew!

x Leila

p.s. The inspiration lyrics for my next two quilts are...."I wanna really really really wanna zigazig ah!" {yup that's the Spice Girls and I'm feeling the shame! ;-)} and it's a tie between "From the moment I could talk I was ordered to listen" & "you're my pride and joy etc."

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