Our Four-in-Art theme this round is Owls, under the year-long theme of Nature.  When Betty chose it, I went blank.  Then she wrote about it, I did a search on Flickr, and ideas starting percolating.  Slowly.

This chick has owl rings and owl socks, but is not the same person that owns the collection up above.  I found out my daughter liked owls, as does my niece, one of my husband’s colleagues and Suz, of Patchworknplay.  I had no idea there were so many owl enthusiasts in my life.

This card was from my granddaughter when I had my surgery. More owls:

But how to move an owl idea into a quilt?  What aspect to focus on?  I looked up the meanings of owls, the folklore and those were all over the map, fragmented.  Sometimes they are good, other times they portent evil or bad things, sometimes they bring luck, in other cultures they spell disaster.  Just about anything can be pinned on an owl.

The only “experience” I’ve had with an owl was when we were traveling in Canada around the Sunshine Circle (Vancouver and above).  We were standing waiting for the ferry to take us across one night.  The sun was fading into pinks and golds and it was pretty quiet up there near Comox that evening.  I was focused on the water and thinking about where we had to get to before we could stop traveling, when all of a sudden I heard a whoosh–a rush of air.  I spun around and an owl was just moving away, its wings unfurled and climbing toward the sky. It was eerie, out of nowhere.  No wonder these birds get pinned with all sorts of intents and purposes.

This was my computer desktop yesterday, with all sort of bits and pieces of my owl scattered over the screen.  Whenever I approach these art quilt deadlines, I feel like a child being dragged kicking and screaming toward home.  Deadline, I moan to no one in particular.  I’d better get crackin’ because I know my Four-in-Art-mates will have theirs ready.

But one thing leads to another and to another and pretty soon I hear my husband arrive home and I’ve been working and veering through a creative journey for hours, absorbed in my task.  And then I can’t wait to get back to where I’m headed–which of course, I have no real idea of where it will end.  For now, I know only the next step, and that’s where I’ll go.

(from *here*)

We’ve decided to open our group up to four more quilters to participate in our art quilt adventure.  You do not need to be an artist (hey–I’m not), but only want to stretch your creative wings.  We have four art quilt deadlines a year: February, May, August and November.  So far, the quilts are experimental in size: 12″ square. You’ll need to have a blog or a Flickr site, and a sense of adventure.  We welcome beginners, but most of us have some years of experience either in handcrafting or sewing.  I think we went this direction just because we wanted to try something new.

Leave a comment if you are interested, along with a comment as to why you might think taking a jump into this kind of creating is where you want to tread.  Make sure I have a link to either your blog or your Flickr site, so I can get a feel for what type of quilter you are.