I need to get some patterns to show and ask her if she likes them. Do you have any suggestions? She is an artist, and she just had knee surgery and a stroke, so I would like to do something for her, and I thought of making a quilt. I am seeing her tonight so I would like to have about 4-10 patterns that she might like. I have seen a few of her paintings, and they were of birds, so I'm thinking birds, but I am not sure, I want to ask her. Any ideas and helpful information would be great! I am planning on hand quilting it, so it is going to be a while before it gets done.

are you wanting applique? or regular piecing patterns?

Do you want designs of birds (applique, pieced) or do you want bird fabric? I just found these on ebay and I'm in love with them. I have a bird theme in my house so I'm thinking about bidding on these--but I'll let you have first option:

http://cgi.ebay.com/PERCHED-BIRDS-EM...3A1%7C294%3A50

I don't know if that link is going to work. If it doesn't, just go to ebay and search for "perched bird fabric". These are on a white background. She also has them on a gold background.

I made a quilt with 6 embroidered SunBonnet Sue blocks that I got from ebay. The colors are really much nicer in person that what my camera captured. And I will never again make braided borders.

oops the pics didn't show up. Let's try that again.

http://quilterscache.com/B/BirdhousesBlock.html
this is one for bird houses that would be easy or you might buy bird print material and make that a center of a block.

oh how cute is your SunBonnet Sue blocks you really incorporated those nicely! :D

Thanks Sharon. That's why I wanted to show it to Quilter101. I couldn't figure out any other way to use just 6 blocks and it would have been wickedly expensive to buy enough of these to make a whole quilt with them.

I bet your friend would love anything that you choose!

WalMart had some really beautiful bird fabric in an awesome shade of blue that you could use and just make simple blocks.

Bird patchwork designs go back a long ways- flying geese, duck's foot, birds of a feather, etc. you can tie quilts using a crow's foot stitch that looks like bird footprints. Lots of great applique and fussy-cut patterns out there, too.