Applique bird blocks...

 I never posted the most recent quilt project I worked on.  I wanted to do some of my favorite birds in applique blocks.  I started with the same batik background fabric and picked out 9 birds to do.  My favorite 4 when I finished I put into a small wall hanging.  I have 5 others done that I have not decided what to do with yet.  Four of them may become another wall hanging.  There are things I'm not satisfied with on the remaining 5 so I'm still deciding what to do with them.

(Click on the photos to see them more closely)

I'm happy with these four, especially the downy and the titmouse.  I used the same background for each bird and the same tree branch fabric.  I decided at the end to add some 3 dimensional aspects to each block....leaves, flowers, seeds.

The downy required a lot of embroidery embellishment but I loved how it turned out.

The titmouse turned out well, also and the little hanging maple seeds.

Sorry that I got these last two photos a bit crooked!  The Red-breasted Grosbeak is a welcome visitor at my feeder every year in May until it moves on northward.  That is why it got flowers on its tree branch.

Chickadees are one of my favorite birds and I keep trying to make a good one.  They never seem quite right to me but I like these two OK.  I struggle with small applique pieces of fabric.

These are the birds I haven't used yet in a wall hanging.

The Short-eared Owl was a struggle from start to finish and still not satisfied!  Should have used stabilizer on the back for the heavy stitching I ended up doing on it.  Will end up a "stand alone" piece of some sort.

Indigo Bunting

Vermillion Flycatcher

A pair of nuthatches.....white-breasted and red-breasted.  Wasn't happy with my fabric choice for the White-Breasted Nuthatch.  Still needs some embroidery work.

Haven't worked on these last 5 for a while because I got discouraged with how they were turning out but will finish them at some point in time.  Would like to try some more birds eventually but not part of this fabric series.

Color Wheel Cats...

I started this a couple years ago and finally finished it....or at least I think I finished it!  I didn't start out with a plan, I was just making the color wheel center because I like making "hexie" flowers and I like color.  Then I decided to add silhouettes of cats from a black fabric I had that had color swirling through it.

After picking out a background and adding the border it seemed like it needed more color, so I made the corner flowers.

I like the orange flower with the cat face on one petal :-)

I'm still thinking about adding some 3-D butterflies....just out of the cat's reach and maybe flying up to the corner flowers.  2-3 at most.   We will see.  Haven't totally figured that out yet.

My friend Linda B did the background quilting.  I didn't want the flowers and cats quilted but she thought they were too loose without quilting, so I hand quilted around the center of the color wheel flowers and did some embroidery on the corner flowers.  Good thing nobody ever sees the back of my wallhangings, although I used a "busy" fabric that doesn't show my large stitches particularly.

It was a fun project and something accomplished finally!

The Wild Blingdom...

 I finally finished a quilt that I call "The Wild Blingdom".  It's made of batik circles on batik squares and I embellished them with embroidery and other stuff and put a fancy animal brooch on each one.  Just a crazy idea I got one day.  I had a lot of fun with it but am glad that it is finally done!

Taking photos was difficult.

Tried hanging it on the fence outside....better light.

Here are groupings of blocks that show all of them, I think and some individual photos, also

The elephant and penguins were appliqued from other fabric as was the chickadees on the block below.

The little spider web is an earring that used to belong to my daughter.

I almost missed this section.  Not crazy about the flamingo pin, but it was all I had for that block.

The fish pin was one I got as a teenager.

Didn't use a pin on this block, but made hexie owls and added some owl buttons.

There had to be a spider web, of course and a very big spider!

One of my favorites with turtle buttons and a turtle pin.

A neighbor game me the bird pin and I always wanted to use it on a crazy quilt somewhere.  I had fun making the nest.

The beaded frog I bought on Amazon....I love it!

Making the tree was a lot of fun.  Embroidery yarn twisted and sewn down as the roots.

Just a lot of sunflower buttons with bees and a squirrel pin that I couldn't find anywhere else to use.

I really need to do some quilting in the backgrounds to take them flatter, but I just don't want to bother with it.  I would have to do it by hand quilting and I'm not very good at that.

Following the Quilt Barn trails again in Kentucky....

This last week Mike and I spent a few days in Kentucky and I had the opportunity to follow one Quilt Barn trail in one country and then stumbled on a few more from another county on the way home.  Here they are in no particular order.

Flower Power challenge quilt....Dresden Dahlias....with the border added and finished....

My "Dresden Dahlias" quilt with the border on and the binding done.

 Trying to find a spot with a little color blooming outside to take these photos.

Had fun making this....now time to move on to something new!

New project for the Flower Power challenge in our guild....

Our guild challenge this year is "Flower Power".....any quilted item with a flower theme.

I had been working on Dresden plate blocks for awhile, when I decided they looked like flowers if you added an extra row of "petals", so I call this "Dresden Dahlias".  I have decided it needs a border, so I am currently looking for something that would look right for a border.

  I wanted to pose it with some flowers, so I went ahead and took some photos even though it isn't finished yet.  Will post again when I finish it :-)  You can't see in this photo but I have done a lot of embroidery on the petals.  I seem to turn everything into a crazy quilt any more.

 You can see a bit of the stitching in this close shot of the orange flower.  I'm still working on the corner green fans.

I really like making these and have a lot of left-over pieces that will probably end up as Christmas presents.....runners, pillows, small table toppers?