YOU TOO CAN MAKE UNIQUE BIRDS

One always wonders if explanation is required.  This is a bird.  I’ve joined Mary Lou Weidman’s swap again, and this time we are making birds.  I love Mary Lou’s work and “patterns.”  I put that in quotes because I don’t think she really has patterns, at least not in the traditional sense.  She has a unique way of making blocks.  She calls it her Hoochy Mama technique.  You take a piece of fabric and hoochy this and hoochy that and you can end up with a bird like this.  Isn’t it cute?

You may have heard that I don’t care for piecing, mainly because I can never get my seams to match or my blocks to be square.  With Mary Lou’s Hoochy Mama technique I am free from math and worry about seams.  I am free to create.  

Mary Lou encourages quilters to stretch their skills.  She invites you to play and discover your inner artist.  What an adventure it was making this block.  Using the Hoochy Mamma technique, I’ve had fun being creative with the bird’s tail.  I hate to throw away scraps.  When making the bird’s body, I cut the corners off a block of fabric.  I couldn’t throw away those small scraps.  I had to use them, so I made a unique tail.  What a thrill it was to see this develop as I used those left-over pieces of fabric.

This is another creative experiment at making a different kind of tail using scraps.

This is another one where I used the left over corner scraps for the tail.
 

Mary Lou says she is a process teacher.  She does not teach you to make the same quilt that your neighbor makes.  That certainly was true for me when making these birds.  Not one of my bird blocks turned out the same.  Each bird has it’s own unique identity.  I can’t wait until I get my birds from the swap group.  If you want to be adventurous, if you want to be unique, if you want to make quilts that are not just like all the others, I encourage you to check out Mary Lou’s blog.  It is a fun experience just viewing it.   

Allie of Allie-Oops Sweet Happy Life has a whole list of great links to tutorials and patterns.  After you have spent hours surfing that, check out her blog here where she has a tutorial for a magnetic quilted photo frame.  Wouldn't that be a great Mother's Day gift!

♥

Stay Positive!

Caroll