Carolyn's Cock-a-Doodle- Doo

When I heard that our challenge word was “doodle,” my first thought was "cock-a-doodle-doo".  But, being the avid researcher that I am, I began by doing a google search for the word “doodle.”  Try as I might, I could not get the image of a crowing rooster out of my head.  I found some delightful pictures of hens, but very few roosters, and none that were colorful enough for me. 

I decided that my rooster would be made out of Kaffe Fassett fabrics and that he had to be appear very cocky and proud.  I made several attempts at drawing the rooster and kept making his chest bigger and bigger with his head thrown way back until I was satisfied with his cockiness.  I used Laura Wasilowski’s technique of building a focal piece onto a leftover paper backing (resist paper) that was peeled off and salvaged from a previous fused piece. Using my iron, I lighted attached a fabric outline of his body to this paper backing.  Using a variety of pre-fused Kaffe florals, I carefully and tediously cut out each feather individually, layering them one on top of the other by lightly touching them with the tip of my iron.  I quickly discovered that cotton fabrics proved to be much harder to adhere in this manner than batiks.  After I was satisfied with my rooster, I lifted him carefully off of the salvaged paper background and placed him on a commercial hand-dyed fabric background. Then I added the grass, feet, “sound” streams and some sunrise shadowing with fabric pencils.  I machine stitched each feather and the entire rooster using my walking foot.  The background was free-motion stitched on my new Bernina sit-down long-arm. Aurifil thread was used for all of the stitching.

After I made the rooster, some of my favorite Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey tunes from the late 1940s popped into my head.  I remembered that one was called “The Dipsy Doodle.”  It was actually a dance that young people favored during that era.  I picked up an unfinished machine pieced project I had begun in a class with Sheila Frampton Cooper.  I had not had an inspiration of what to do with it.  I decided to make it into another 12x12 doodle.  I wanted to try my hand at making pebbles and circles on my new long-arm, and did so in the areas you see in the photo.  After that, I used my walking foot to finish the rest of the quilt.  I like to think of the trumpet part of this quilt as an actual trumpet blaring out the big band sound of “The Dipsy Doodle.”  This jive-inspired quilt was made with cotton fabrics stitched with Aurifil thread.  I like it so much that I think I may try this difficult curved piecing technique on a larger quilt in the near future!