New Quilts: I Like A Kea (1) & (2)

 After reading The Bird Way: A New Look at How Birds Talk, Work, Play, Parent, and Think I fell in love with the Kea parrots of New Zealand. One of the videos I found featured them playing with a snowball, a camera embedded inside. They have startling plumage: olive green mostly, with orange, bright greens and blues, and I knew I wanted to capture them somehow in a quilt. I had the colors, my own dyed fabrics and a few that Velma had sent me, and I had a thought of wings, of the bird flying.

I pieced it all together, but it was unbalanced. I went through contortions trying to solve the puzzle of integrating the top and the bottom. I had a friend take a look, and by looking through her eyes I knew what to do: cut it in half. Two quilts. The texts say: 1) They work together  2) from nests underground / to the sky to fly. And they are so close this time they have to have the same title, numbered.

I Like a Kea (1)

36.5"w x 21"h (90 cm x 53.5 cm)

hand-dyed, Velma-dyed, commercially dyed cotton; sashiko and embroidery thread; hand quilted

I Like a Kea (2)

36.5"w x 22"h (90 cm x 56 cm)

hand-dyed, Velma-dyed, commercially dyed cotton; sashiko and embroidery thread; hand and machine quilted

detail, I Like a Kea (1)

detail, I Like a Kea (1)

detail, I Like a Kea (2)

To capture their playfulness I realized that they must be live and moving. You can watch them here. Those wily birds.