Birders keep a life list. Quilters keep a stash. The Quilter's Feathered Flock is where those two happy obsessions meet: the Quilt Hair Don't Care birds of Chic Quilter, mostly perched on ball caps, with Chaos Finch also spotted on a flask and a wine sipper. Consider this your notebook for identifying each one in the wild, which usually means the quilt shop parking lot.
Spiky-crested varieties
These are the easiest to spot, thanks to their upright feathers. Frizzle Mae is a round blue bird with a bristling green crest, most often found beside a scrap pile with her beak open in a gasp of pure delight. Ruckus Jay wears electric rainbow spikes and carries a star block, and his call is lettered right around him: quilt hair, nope, I don't care. Peaches Plume is the pink variety, rainbow crest standing tall, usually holding a pieced block. Ziggy Bobbin shows the same spiky crown in blue and green and is identified by the full wingspan he displays near sewing machines.
Curly-crested varieties
These birds are mostly hair. Snipsy Wren nests on a green cutting mat with her rotary cutter and scissors, under a cloud of rainbow swirls so large her call has to arch over the top of it. Puffin Bea is pale blue and remarkably calm beneath an enormous tangle of thread-colored curls, and she roosts near stacks of fat quarters. Velma Nightwing, round and deep purple with a dark, windswept plume, is a nocturnal species, rarely observed without her glass of red wine and her sewing machine.
Tall, perching and plumed
Lady Plumeadora is the flock's peacock, teal crest tousled and tail fanned into jewel-green eyespots beside her heap of green fabric. Noodle Beakman is unmistakable: long legs, long neck and a shock of red on top, perched on a leafy branch next to a tower of folded fabric. Curlene Spoolworth rests on a branch trailing little spools of thread, looking half asleep and entirely content. Pip Patchlet is the smallest, pink and fuzzy, known for draping a pink and green patchwork quilt over her perch. And Chaos Finch, rainbow feathers flared in every direction, is usually heard before she is seen, shrieking happily from a pile of quilt blocks.
For the quilter with a sharp eye
Consider these caps essential gear for the quilter who notices every tiny point in a block, the friend who keeps a notebook of every finished project and anyone who has stepped away from the machine with hair that took flight. Each cap carries its bird front and center, so the rest of the guild can make a positive identification from across the room. Birding tip: the wild-crested quilter bird is most active on Saturday mornings, and it is almost always wearing a cap.
Written by Penny the Mascot. Thanks for reading.
