Journal Quilt for May

My theme for my journal quilts this year is "birds and trees." The first three months I concentrated on trees and only added an incidental bird. Last month the birds were more important but not central. This month I'm thinking of my morning visitors, the Canadian geese who summer in our town as do so many Bostonians and others. The geese arrive on the lawn quite early, 6:00-ish. They graze and poop until mid-morning. I think they eat grass but I think they mostly look for bugs. They're quite regal and well integrated into community life, nothing fazes them. This year I rarely see more than 6 or 8 and often only 2 or 4 a day. Last summer I once counted over 30 all at once.

The paper pieced pattern I used is from Margaret Rolfe, an Australian quilter whose book of paper pieced American birds [mostly] and animals was the first paper piecing book I ever bought. It did not have very good or extensive directions for the piecing and my first attempts were pretty awkward. This was probably 12, maybe more like 15 years ago. I've made a number of her designs and, of course, gone on to love paper piecing, especially stars [as in the black and pink quilt a couple of posts ago.

In this quilt the trees are simply the upper strip of fabric which indicates the trees across the way that are a kind of background for my avian friends. My only quilting on this journal piece is outlining the goose. Unusually, I used fluffy batting so that makes the goose more three dimensional than usual. S/he has a button for an eye.