Great Blue’s Eyes On You

Nearly two years ago, we returned to St. Louis for a high school reunion and a celebration of the Sierra Club Ozark Chapter in St. Louis. At the latter event, I was talking with Dick Spener, a long-time friend and amazing photographer. I asked if I could use one or more of his photos as the basis of one or more quilts. He gave me permission and later sent some photos. I was immediately drawn to a photo of a Great Blue Heron.

Great Blue Heron photo by Richard “Dick” Spener.

My first step in producing a quilt is to create a drawing based on the photo, often by outlining the shapes I want to reproduce and having the drawing enlarged to the size I want. The shapes are then transferred to muslin, the basis for building the collage. In this case, I used a batik background fabric instead of muslin.

I begin the collage with the bird or animal, usually with the eyes and gradually build the body.

This is an early stage of creating the heron. If you look closely, you can see the black drawing of the remainder of the body, which will be covered as I work. The free-cut pieces are first pinned to the background, then glued lightly with tacky glue.

This photo shows some of the details, after the quilt is completed.

After the body is completed, I work on the background. By building the collage from the batik background, I don’t have to nudge background fabric under the edges of the heron. But I still need to make it interesting. In this case, I added rocks, trees and grass around the heron.

In this photo, the collage is nearing completion, with two trees, grass, and rocks all cut from fabrics in my stash. After this is finished, I added a tulle fabric to hold down the many small pieces, then added backing fabric and batting before free-motion quilting it. When the quilting is complete, I trim the edges into the final shape. Rather than using a binding, I used a facing, which doesn’t show in the front of the quilt.

The completed quilt is 27 inches wide and 31 inches tall. I called it “Great Blue’s Eyes on You.” It was accepted for the 2023 “Birds of a Fiber” show at the Pacific Northwest Quilt & Fiber Arts Museum earlier this year in La Conner, WA. The museum used a photo of the quilt to promote the show, and I was thrilled. I plan to enter it in the Quilters Anonymous show in 2024, which is March 15-17 at the Evergreen State Fairgrounds in Monroe, WA.