Drop one, pick up another

Three things to be happy about:
(1) a room with a view
(2) knowing what not to wear
(3) blue-and-white seersucker
I could add a 4th thing and say "a good ole tanning booth tan that makes your skin look like leather, your lips look like Lord knows what and are so stiff you can't even open your mouth, and people all over the world are jealous of you"... but I won't though.   Just saying...

Years ago when you used to get fabric from Sears - and before I became a quilter - I was looking at some summer fabrics when this little old lady next to me says "I'm a sucker for seersucker!"  I thought it was hilarious.

I got tired of diddling around with the string stars, I wanted to do something a little more diverse for a change!  Although creating scrap yardage has it's merits, I wanted to do something different.

Since I have to make children's quilts anyway, I found this Yard Birds quilt in my quilt bucket list and thought I'd give it a whirl.  I'd like to give credit to the designer but I don't know who she is other than the name Rhonda; I've had the pdf a pretty good while and at this point I don't remember where I found it.

 It's surprising how industrious you can get at 5:30 am when you're wide awake and don't really have a desire to lie abed!  I got up and traced a few sets of chicken feet and beaks onto fusible, then ironed them to a bright yellow fabric.

Just to make sure I was pointed in the right direction, I grabbed two fabrics for the chick body and added fusible to the back. 

On our quilters cruise last November, Pat Sloan taught us a method of using a thin line of fusible just inside and outside the drawn line of a shape, rather than covering the entire piece solid with fusible.  This makes it more flexible and easier to work with, especially if you're working by hand, but I'll be using my machine.

This works okay but you have to be sure that the inner part of the fabric is pressed smoothly.  I don't think it will make a difference in this piece, but can you see the wrinkle on both pieces?

I think I can smooth it down pretty well during the ironing process. 

I laid out one chick on the background fabric I intend to use... it's right cute but I think I'll switch the legs to a brown fabric!

You can just barely see the feet against that background fabric, I think changing the color of the legs will be easier than trying to find background fabric that will go well with whatever fabric I choose for the body. 

All of them will have the same yellow beaks and red comb, but the body will be different for each one.



That's all for now, have a great Friday.

Sew forth and sew on