Time to Design
- Astrid
- Mar 24
- 3 min read
Beginning last autumn, I decided to design a quilt about quail. My inspiration came from a few places, but in my neighborhood park, I saw a lone quail running for cover. It was the first and only quail I had seen! That was enough to send me to what I like to call the design lab. (There is no lab, it's just in my mind). So I looked on the web for photographs of California Quail, and got started.
This was a great inspiration photo from allaboutbirds.org to get me started. The very first design goal was to get a bird body. There are many, and I mean so many bird bodies for quilts out there. I had to make my own without borrowing from someone else. I figured I could use some half square triangles on the quail's back, and some blocks for the main body. The trick was how to make both the feather that comes from the forehead, and the quail face.
Well after a lot of trial and error, I came up with a basic body and head. The block is very large so that I could make the quail face without paper piecing. Quite pleased, I was! Now to put it into a repeated pattern for a qult. "A throw size might be nice," I thought. After arranging the quail blocks into rows, I added some embellishments to fill in the negative space. We're all working on being positive around here (wink)!
Done! Finito! Or at least I thought. But after a week or so, I began to revisit my quilt design. It seemed to lack something. I began to look for ways to revise it. Maybe change the diamond embellishments. The yellow line? The colors? I know, I'll change the direction the center row is facing! And I'll change the background color as well.
The Changes
I came up with a second design. This time the colors were different. I liked the new, warm feel of it. It seemed outdoorsy. Suddenly I felt like I was driving a Sprinter van, headed to the great outdoors! Three quail facing the opposite direction in the middle was just the tweak this quilt needed. So natural! Such variety! But why do the bodies of my quail look like more like a mourning dove? Is it too round in the front? Back to the design lab.
I looked up more photos of quail, researched them thoroughly. I can tell you quite a bit about them these days! How they sound. Where they live. What their eggs look like. The list goes on. I asked for feedback on the design. I looked at it from all angles. Somehow, all this gave me a fuller picture of what quail are.
More Changes
I went to work on the legs. I was told they should be angled. Done. What else? I ran across a photo of a quail on the cover of the manual I use each year. It was kismet. How I hadn't noticed it for the last eight years is a mystery. The quail was looking over its shoulder! I snapped a picture with my phone, and put it up on my design wall. Then I saw what I needed to do. Some could be looking over their shoulder. Whew! Finally. This was getting tiring. But there was one thing that still bothered me. The blockiness of the face. How can I make this look softer? No idea. I finally just sat down and tried making the lines more natural. It worked.
Final Design
So two color schemes, dozens of sewn pieces, a couple of test blocks, and four months later I have settled on what I think will be the final pattern. As of the writing of this, drumroll please, here is the final design!
I hope you are as excited as I am! As soon as I can get the instructions written into a pattern, I will make this available. Thanks for taking this journey with me. Happy quilting!
~Astrid
Quilt Artisan
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