Posted in collage, embellishing, quilting

Catbird Sings Reveal

Posted on by Laura Kate

In his Guide to Birds, David Sibley describes the gray catbird’s song thusly:

” …a rambling, halting warble with slow tempo…low hoarse notes with high sharp chips and squeaks interspersed….little repetition and little mimicry.”

…..which is, while accurate, a rather dry and technical explanation for what I heard that day:

Catbird Sings

In my final arrangement of this fiber object, I ditched the blue fabric which I was going to use as a framework for the “notes and chips.” Instead, I let the purple satin cord act as a highway for the eye to travel to each vocal outburst. I also unified the color of the lower section by overpainting the batik print using violet.

Close up of bird hidden in purple shrubbery

The free motion stitching wasn’t overly planned. I mostly just followed the clues given by the appliques and the color changes in the background.

Upper section finished with closely spaced stitching and pearlescent paint

I hope you enjoy “seeing” this catbird’s song, as much as I enjoyed listening to it.

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One of six children, I was raised by a busy mom, who instilled in me a love of fabric. Though I learned to sew and knit at a young age, it was the arrival of my first grandchild that pushed me into action. A long-time knitter, I am now ready to explore all things fiber.

15 thoughts on “Catbird Sings Reveal”

    1. I had to give it a lot of thought. At first I wanted to use images of the sound waves themselves but quickly discarded that idea as not visually interesting. Thanks for commenting, I’m glad you like the piece.

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      1. Have you ever seen the images of bird sonograms? I have the book The Singing Life of Birds which has those images, but it’s one I haven’t gotten around to reading yet. Your piece reminded me of it, but I really like how you used color to interpret the sound as well.

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