Guinea Hens

I bought a fun piece of fabric recently that had some really cool, stylized Guinea hens printed on it. I love these adorable little hens. My adventurous grandmother went through dozens of breeds of chickens when I was a kid, and I think I liked the Guineas the best. They were small and had a gazillion white speckles all over their feathers, and were very round, with big butts that stuck up in the air, no tails to speak of, at least not like most other chickens. They had really ugly heads with very few feathers and eyes that were sort of hooded and made them look mean! But they weren't mean, in fact, they were quite sweet little birds that made a much softer and more appealing sound than many of the other chickens I remember meeting in my childhood.

So... when I saw a piece of fabric with Guinea hens on it at my friend Pat's shop, I snatched it up quick.  I thought I was going to be making a small piece, but noooooooooo. This quilt took on a life of it's own and wound up being another 5' x 6' monster! I framed the big hen first, and then put black & white frames around the two medium and the seven small hens...

Then I put some more fabrics around the smaller pieces, and it was at about this time I realized I was in trouble...

Working a little further, and I'm just about up to as big as I want to get...

At this point, my work table looked like this, and I was still wishing I had more fabrics to incorporate...

Then, what, to my wondering eyes should appear, but a humongous box crammed with African fabric scraps, that I'd totally forgotten about!!!

After that, I went ape-diddley, and started flinging fabric up on the quilt wall like my arse was on fire, and within a few days, the piece said, "Stop! You're done." As you can see, I only used five of the seven small hens... finding room for the remaining two wasn't gong to happen, so they'll go on the back.

For now, I'm taking a few weeks to let it sit and cool down before I start quilting it. In the meantime, I'm working at completing a few UFOS, so I'll have more pieces to show at my trunk show in November.