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."
