Fly, robin, fly

This little top is called a Row Robin, and is made of rows of quilt blocks sewn by different people and mailed around the country. The name is a play on "Round Robin," where the blocks are sewn around and around a central medallion. This one was started by Spoon, a member of my online quilt guild. He made the overlapping batik squares and set the color palette of the piece. So bright and cheerful! Then Kathleen added flying geese so it could fly away to me. I must have had geese on the brain, because the idea of adding feathers popped into my head and wouldn't leave until I made them.



I used a free pattern by Anna Marie Horner called Feather Bed to piece the blocks. The original size was a bit too big, so I reduced the templates on my printer to end up with three across. I then made this test block with a gray  and black background fabric. Not only was the background too busy and jarring, I messed up the math and the feather was too small. But it worked as proof-of-concept, so I reprinted the templates and changed to the dark purple background. Much better!

These feathers were fiddly and fussy (and folded funny in the photo,) so I'm glad I only had to make seven of them. If I tried them again, I might use striped fabric instead of strip piecing.  But that's part of the fun of a collaborative effort like this, to try something new!  Now this little robin will flutter to it's next destination at Carol's house and then eventually back to Spoon to be finished.