Ficus of the Fabulous Feathers: A Fabric Collage Holiday Story

No matter how you spend this holiday season, or better yet, how you’re able to spend this time, there will probably be stories to tell, or hear, or watch. Well, this post is no exception. It’s not long or complicated, but it’s sweet. It’s about a lame and rescued bird, Ficus, and his superpower. In considering a post for today, Christmas Day, this little quilt, “Ficus’s Fabulous Feathers,” by Mary McKay came to mind—Ficus is kind of like Tiny Tim, from A Christmas Carol, I told Tom. Tom replied something about “stretching it,” but agreed it would be a good story for the week’s post.

I’ve been working with Mary on her fabric collage quilts for a couple years now, starting with a live class (pre-pandemic), and continuing online with coaching and live online classes the last year and a half. This past September, after months of working on much more involved fabric collage projects, Mary was inspired to begin and then finish a smaller quilt and simpler subject, just for fun. And then she submitted the quilt into the 2022 Road to California Quilt Show, just for the heck of it. I liked Ficus from the start, and told Mary that if he got into the show, I’d give him his own blog post. On December 16th, she sent me a copy of the acceptance letter of “Ficus’s Fabulous Feathers.”

In the future, I should probably be more careful with my promises, but this one has worked out well. I’m in love with Ficus and his story and the superhero treatment that his rescuer Mia, has lavished on him. And I love how Mary’s collage has immortalized Ficus the Wonder Bird—a lowly Eurasian collared dove turned avian superhero—whose origin story is one of triumph over tragedy as this poor orphan fledgling overcame injury to become an inspiration to us all (a little like Tiny Tim, wouldn’t you agree?).

From here on I’ll let Mary tell the story of Ficus’s rise to the ranks of superheroes.

From Mary:

I have three dogs. I spend a lot of time at the vet’s. One of the vet techs has this bird, Ficus, that she rescued when he was a fledgling and he fell out of the ficus tree by the hospital. She has hand-raised him. He is disabled. He can’t fly and neither can he stand. But he commutes to work with her every day, and is a valued part of the veterinary staff. On his non-work days he hangs out with his super hero buddies saving the world.

But Mia loves this bird, as I’ve discovered. A couple weeks ago when I was at the vet’s, he had pulled out one of his nails and he was bleeding. There was a lot of drama but Dr. Reed saved his life. Birds apparently bleed to death very easily because they don’t have a lot of blood to begin with.

This [photo above] was his second birthday party. You can see his superhero friends all came. Mia is devoted to this bird. I said to myself, it might be easy to collage him because it wasn’t complicated and I could have a lot of fun with it.

This feather material [below] suddenly materialized in my life and I was trying to use it—it’s really hard for me to embellish stuff because I’m plain in a lot of ways, but I put lace on the feathers to make them even more fabulous. And then came up with the idea of the superheroes’ bursting through the universe.

This is the smallest collage quilt I’ve created [16.5 inches square]. I am inspired by Susan Carlson’s method. I enjoyed manipulating the fabric and used four types of tulle on the foreground. Tulle also covers Mickey Lawler’s fabulous hand painted background.

Thank you, Mary, for sharing this quilt and story with us—Happy Holidays. Mary has given the quilt to Mia, Ficus’s rescuer, but it will be on display at the “SoCal Quilts” Exhibit at Road to California, January 19-22, 2022.

“And so, as Tiny Tim said, ‘A Merry Christmas to us all; God bless us, everyone!’”—Charles Dickens

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A Holiday Gift from Us—Enjoy a FREE PATTERN of Your Choice

These downloadable patterns are perfect for fabric collagers of any level—created to give alternate design options to the fabric collage technique found in my Serendipity Quilts book and eWorkshops.
Use the coupon code below.
This code may be shared (just forward this post to a friend) but applied only once per user. 

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Visit susancarlson.com/patterns to select.

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THREE SPACES LEFT for our Live Online Fabric Collage Class for January 24-28, 2022. That’s five days plus a 1-hour private coaching session to be scheduled the week before class. For those of you who have been waiting to join such an online event, we took a good look at 2022’s schedule and realized this will likely be the only 5-Day Live Online Class until later in the fall, as I have in-person teaching obligations to fulfill in between.

Here’s the link for more information.

And here’s the link to register for the class.

This is a five-day, animals-only class. The class day typically runs from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Eastern Time to accommodate those on the west coast for whom it runs 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.

Please feel free to contact Tom with any other questions ([email protected]). And if you live in another part of the world where our time zones are quite incompatible, yet you’d be interested in a live online class, please let us know and maybe we could come up with an alternative solution.