This was a busy week and thoughts about the challenge would pop in and out of my mind randomly. Saturday morning, as I was laying on the floor stretching, the whole quilt came through in one flash. My theme is whatever is going on in my life at the time of the challenge and the idea came of a horizontal orientation, with a flock of birds coming back with the spring weather (flying in an S shape formation which is not strictly accurate), and bare trees underneath them at the bottom of the quilt. The birds would be dark blue purple against a yellow and orange sky. As I looked out the window, there was a small flock of grackles swarming into the trees in the backyard!

The orange of the sky and the birds are fused and the trees were first drawn in with a purple fabric marker. That didn't look quite right so I ended up threadpainting them-which was boring as heck and very time consuming, but I finally decided definitely worth the work. The size is 22 1/2' x 11".

Nancy Schlegel
www.nrsquilter.wordpress.com