Shoo Fly Rosie

Meet Rosie, the Shoo Fly cow. 

This year’s Executive Challenge for the Maritime Modern Quilt Guild was to make a modern quilt from a classic block. Blocks were drawn at random and assigned to members. I got shoo fly. Hmm. Googled shoo fly. Walked into my sewing room and found fabric with flies on it, and realized I had to use it to make a play on the name. I would make a cow shooing flies.

First I made her eyes, and realized that if I kept going at their scale, a whole cow would be huge. Ok. Just make a head. Then I made some shoo fly flies in the green fabric. They don’t show up fabulously well in the photo, apart from the bits on Rosie, but they are there to plague her. There was a retreat when I desperately needed a break from curved piecing. Those of you who read about my Mawwiage quilt will understand. Rosie started to take shape. You can see that I always work in an impeccably neat space, and that I would never imbibe while sewing. Not. Clearly, the passion of creativity was heating up. I promise I was still dressed, even if both sweater and jacket were off. 

And so Rosie grew. Her face was finished with the last of my lighter brown. The final scrap was found on the floor, and was just big enough if I added tiny bits of the green in a shoo fly style. I thought they were an improvement. I resisted suggestions to add eyelashes, but when Roxanne suggested an ear tag, I thought she was brilliant. The cow came home and started to eat a large pink flower, which was a shoo fly in a shoo fly in a shoofly, but the quilt was too dull. Then she roamed into a field of flowers, and finally acquired a bow, added asymmetrically after consultation with Bev. She started off as Daisy, then became Petunia when I remembered a cousin had named her daughter Daisy, but recently was renamed Rosie when her flower was quilted and resembled a rose more than a petunia.

She went to Ontario to have her photoshoot by some farm buildings. 

The sun was too much for a cow born this spring in Newfoundland, so she hid under a tree.

Finally, she embraced the Beamsville sunshine and went sunbathing on the grass of a lovely vineyard, dreaming of the delicious wine she might get a lick of when those vines bore fruit, and the wine maker worked his magic.And then she revealed herself to the MMQG in Halifax, and was displayed with all the fabulous modern quilts made by its members in response to the Executive challenge.

Linking up with Connie at Freemotion by the River and Susan at Midweek Makers