If you’ve followed my blog for a while, you know that I’m into batch quilting. I do almost all of my embroideries as separate components which I apply to the quilt top. That gives me the freedom to design more organically and to change plans on a dime.

It also has its limits. I draw things for my embroideries. That doesn’t always mean they fit into the design at the end. Not to worry. There’s always another quilt, and there’s always a need for more bugs, birds, flowers, frogs, and anything else I end up batching.

Small batch elements are excellent for creating a visual path within the piece. They server as stepping stones between larger elements that help carry the eye through the piece. They need to be relatively small and bright to do that.

Bright is a flexible definition. In a blue stream, small copper-brown rocks are bright. A piece of lime yarn on a blue-green background is bright. It’s a matter of contrast. For the last three quilts, I’ve been fixated on small yellow birds. First I did ones in flight and then ones perched.

How many do I need? I ended up stitching another batch when I discovered the ones with blue tail feathers disappeared on the sunflower background. It turned into a pile.

But that’s good. I got the major elements settled on the piece and put the yellow birds in place to generate movement.

It can be bold or subtle. Simply aiming the birds so they’re interacting with each other or with the ladybugs I sprinkled in, creates a line of action within the work.

So how many do I need? I really don’t want to get half through the design and find I need to embroider another batch of birds. How many can I make before I’m bored? The only limit is my attention span.

I’ve finally figured out that it’s worth my trouble to trace out my patterns so I have them left over. I also flip them so I have them in two directions. I probably won’t use the same bird in the same quilt, but often they do look very different after they’re embroidered. It’s actually pretty much the same amount of time by way of setup to embroider 12 birds as 6. The stitching is its own time, but that cuts thread set up dramatically. I spend days doing just mushrooms, or frogs or yellow birds.

It’s changed how I work. It’s changed how I think. And it’s changed my output dramatically.

And then there are all of those wonderful leftovers. You can always use another ladybug or frog. For a small work, it can be the focus itself. There really isn’t any waste. Even if I get tired and stop within the process, I have a nice batch of almost finished bits I can use in the next creation.

How many yellow birds did I make? I believe around 20. I forgot to count. Some of them were orange, so does that count as yellow?

Now. Do I keep the worm?

For more information about batch quilting, see Batch Quilting: How Many Quilts Do You Have Unquilted?