My Quilting Journey No 7 - Chook Run

I saw this wallhanging in an old Aust Patchwork & Quilting Yearbook (no date but around 1998) and thought it would make a great gift for a friend of mine who keeps chickens. When I say keeps chickens, its more like have chickens as pets as she has 4 daughters and they play with the chickens and dress them up and have birthday parties, etc, etc. Anyway I started it in July 2011 and got as far as ironing the appliques on to the blocks but as we were then getting all the floor coverings in the house replaced we had to pack up EVERYTHING and move it all out of the house and then back again so needless to say, it got packed away and left for a few months until things calmed down. If I made it again I would probably make the chickens a little larger as they were quite small and took a bit of skill to machine stitch around the applique shapes! It is quite a small wallhanging when its done so there's plenty of scope for enlarging the pattern. I mostly free-motioned this as a practice to work up the courage to tackle my son's Chinese Dragon quilt which I had ready to finish. I was quite happy with the way it turned out and I gave it to Kirsty for Christmas 2011. She seemed to like it! The tricky bit was finding chooky type fabrics to use. I might make another one to give to my Trees for Life landowner Andrea, who I've been growing trees for now for around 5 years. She usually gives me some lovely country eggs when she picks up her trees so I think she'd like it!