I had pieces leftover from my donated 12" x 12" quilt, Dancing in the Dark, which I liked very much and wanted to use. At the same time I was (am) working on a quilt with letterpress printing and had made a block print of a magpie, and the quilt was stalled. As I arranged leftover pieces I discovered a square window that could accommodate the magpie. For the stalled quilt I had been thinking about including objects, but the scale was wrong. This new quilt was small. The pieces were the right size.
Long ago I purchased a bag of watch parts to draw from, and now they were going to have a home. On another scrap I stitched down the watch parts with transparent thread, something I would not wish on my enemies, especially without a needle threader!
If you research magpies you will find that, contrary to folklore, they don't cache shiny objects in their nests. A few, maybe. They have been known to incorporate humanmade objects (like ospreys do), and in several cases they have torn off anti-bird spikes and built up a canopy of outward facing spikes to defend their castles. No birdbrains, those!
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