Last spring I won some quilt blocks at one of our guild meetings.  They were simple, square-within-a-square blocks, in random colors (but a lot of purple).  I scratched my head a bit as to what to do to tie them all together when it occurred to me they sort of looked like windows.  So, I sashed them together with black fabric, kind of like window sashing, and thought I was done (with the quilt top, anyway).

But the project nagged at me.  It was simple and modern…but it just wasn’t doing anything for me.  It needed something.  The weekend Hurricane Irene blew through I wanted to make sure I had a lot of knitting and hand-sewing projects lying around, in case the power went out.  I unearthed the window quilt from the to-be-finished pile, and considered my options.  I got the idea to applique some bird shapes on the inside squares, and then use my very stale embroidery skills to add some oomph.  And I was pretty pleased with myself when my first block was done:

Oh, how clever I thought I was!

All was well until last night when in a bit of random Netflix surfing I stumbled on the show Portlandia.  I don’t even know how to explain this show and I’m not even going to try – just that it is about Portland, Oregon and is a comedy that definitely requires a certain sense of humor to appreciate.

The second episode opens with a very tongue-in-cheek (in an arrow-through-your-heart sort of way) skit about how all you have to do to turn ordinary, every day objects into capital-A Art is to…put a bird on it.  And then of course a real bird gets into the shop and trashes everything, because really:  as anyone who has experienced city pigeons knows, birds can be evil.  (YouTube clip here.)

Apparently this caused quite a media stir a few months ago, and I have no idea how I missed it.  But I did.

And now I don’t feel so clever anymore.

(However.  I’m keeping the birds on the quilt; capital-A Art be damned.  They make me smile.)