My art quilting group, which has gone from 12 to 10 members, chose to do a challenge of “wonky” houses. I prefer nature and wasn’t excited about making houses, so mentioned that I might not do this challenge. We always have the option of not doing the activities, and I didn’t want to take 4-6 months of my time working on houses. When I mentioned my decision, one of my friends said, “Jackie, why don’t you do bird houses.” That immediately set my mind off racing with possibilities. I was excited to get started. I actually had a LOT of fun designing this one.

If I had wonky bird houses, I felt I needed to have wonky birds, flowers, and other things. Since I’m not a “wonky” image kind of guy, I had to do research on the internet of the “free” images. I don’t have those kind of photos to use to make my patterns. Due to this, I did not enter this quilt in any international shows. Even though the composition and the choices were mine, the houses and wonky images were not my original work. I found some really cute images that I did not use. Even though they were cute, being me, I wanted more “realism” with my wonky things.

I initially made the wonky houses and then had to decide how I was to handle the foliage, flowers, birds, etc. I REALLY liked the border print I had in my stash, but felt it would be too much fussy cutting AND I wouldn’t be able to add the individual pieces that I wanted to add. I decided to do the bottom of the quilt with all appliqué.

I researched wonky flowers and found lots of fun ideas. When I saw little heart flowers, I knew some of my flowers had to be hearts, because Frank and I LOVE our flower gardens. I happened to have some fabric that had plant like foliage designs. So, I fussy cut a bunch of that out and laid it at the bottom. I then worked in some flowers at the tips of the greenery. I love mushrooms, and plan to do a quilt with mushrooms some day, so added some whimsical mushrooms. I added some cute lady bugs climbing up to the daisies I had sketched.

I watch the birds on my bird feeders outside my office window. I enjoy the wildlife and pets, as well, as they come together. I have seen baby deer, and actually fed BIG BIRD, not the TV star, but female turkeys, which was amazing. But the prominent thing I wanted to include was a caricature of Fio. She stands at the window and watches the squirrels. Then she comes around to my desk, and wags her back end in excitement. I take her to the front door and she makes a beeline for the squirrel on the feeders. She keeps trying but never catches them. I used the photo for the label. So, in the corner, I showed Fio hiding behind a bush watching a squirrel with a sunflower seed, ready to chase.

Our two cats come around, looking for birds, I’m ashamed to say. Fortunately, I only saw Spot catch one bird. She didn’t bite it, just held it in her mouth to play with. I released it and it took off. So, I had to add the cats to the quilt. I had a piece of fabric that had lots of comical cats. One of them looked like the head of Shopette who has a striped gray body. I used it. However, I fussy cut out the little blue bird that the fabric had in its mouth. I couldn’t bring myself to have an image of the cat with a bird. Then I found a fabric with a somewhat striped gray mixture for the body. For the cat Spot, I cut out dotted fabric. I checked out the color of his eyes and cut out some yellow fabric, and since he is so loving and always rubbing against your legs, I put a smile on his face.

Next, I started on the birds. I included some of the birds we see such as the Missouri blue birds, indigo bunting, cardinal, blue jay, goldfinch, and the little nuthatcher, who likes to sit upside down. I added the little Downey woodpecker, who flies to the feeders, then zips off as quick as possible. I added a purple martin and babies on the tallest of the birdhouses to represent the bird house Frank put up to attract them. On the right side is a little Carolina wren, which sits in the tree by the patio and sings to us all the time. This was SO MUCH FUN to make!

There were a lot of little pieces to appliqué down and then to quilt. It took a lot of different colored threads to do the appliquéing.

Some of the birds were taken from my photos. Due to Fio and a few others not created by me, I did not enter this quilt except once, when I was asked to enter due to the number of Viewer’s Choice votes I got in the Columbia show.

Shows

“Wonky Bird Houses”, selected for Missouri Quilt Museum, Hamilton, MO.,Sept.-October, 2025.