The Quilter on Osage Hill

A couple weeks ago I found some pins we bought at the Shaker Village Craft store many years ago. They are hand carved and painted birds with amazing detail. Specifically they are different types of woodpeckers. My husband, Kent, is a huge bird lover and his favorite of all are woodpeckers. We loved these little hand carved birds and had plans to make some shadow box or some kind of display, but in the end they were put in a drawer and forgotten.

I found the pins a couple weeks before Kent’s birthday this year and thought I could make a nice wall hanging for him with the pins. I found the perfect background fabric with trees and woodpeckers. It is a Michael Miller fabric in a line called Backyard Baby. The scale was perfect for the pins!

I thought I could frame the background fabric to appear as you were looking out of a window. I found some Joel Dewberry fabric that looked like wood grain that would be perfect for my window sill. I decided to miter the corners as opposed to do straight lines to look more like a window sill. I had never done a miter before, but found a some great tutorials online and found directions in one of my quilting books. It wasn’t hard to do and I think it turned out pretty good in the end.

Instead of doing binding I sewed it together inside out leaving a small opening and then turned right sides out and edge stitched around it. In the end I had just enough wood grain fabric for the back. I did very simple quilting to outline the trees and add a little depth. I was pleased with the finished project and, more importantly, Kent was surprised and pleased with it too! Here is a close up of each of the pins:

It’s nice to have a simple, quick project to work on and finished is ALWAYS good. I’m so glad I stumbled on those pins; it had been years since I had seen them and now we can enjoy the pins too!

     Sew long from the Quilter on Osage Hill!