The Bird Songs are Back

Yes, you know it's Spring (or almost Spring) when you hear the tweet-tweets outside your window before the sun comes up! And just in time to give them some birdhouses.

I finished my Home Grown birdhouse quilt (actually, the second one) a few weeks ago. I quilted it myself and put the binding on. I used four of my upsized Birdhouse patterns with a height of 10"

Words to Live By: 44" x 44". Using a large panel in the center

One of my neighbors took a nasty fall last summer when she and her family were on vacation in Switzerland. She broke her foot and had to have several pieces of metal screws to keep things together put into her bones! I ran into her last week and she told me she broke one of the screws and needed surgery again. I felt she needed some cheering up so this quilt went to live with Nicole.

Can I say how good it made me to see how ecstatic she was to get this? I know I cheered her up and her smiles made my day.

This quilt is the cousin of my first birdhouse quilt made with the Home Grown collection by Benartex. Do you remember that? This hangs in my kitchen year 'round.

The Birds and Bees at Home

You can do a search here on my blog and see closeups and process steps of these upsized Birdhouses.

They are contained in a 22 page pdf with full size patterns for ten 10" (height) birdhouses. Here's my A-Frame pattern with the fabrics I chose to make it.

60s A-Frame foundation pattern: 7-1/2" x 10"

I have added the patch size to cut for each of the foundation sections so there's no guessing and waste. Here's the Home Tweet Home block from the front:

Home Tweet Home: 7-1/2" x 10"

And because I trim my patches BEFORE I add the next patch, there is a clean 1/4" seam so that it appears that I stitched this with templates. Not so!

Home Tweet Home back

I'm all out of that fabric collection and the last of my paper pieced birdhouse blocks. But you can't say that I've run out of homes for all the birds in my backyard!