Hen's Day Out

We still have our white hen Didee in an isolation pen so that the other two won't peck at her and so far it seems to be going well.  On Friday the sun was shining so I let her out for a while with the others, thinking that they'd all be so happy in the warmth that they would leave each other alone.  I was wrong.  When I brought her inside at the end of the day for her daily antiseptic wound-cleaning there was a new bit of the wound that had been pecked... it is such a shame.  I can't risk it again as I want her wound to heal up, so I will have to just keep her on her own and not feel too sorry for her.  It really is for her own good.
At least the wound wasn't oozing any puss, but there are a lot of red/black scabs unfortunately.

As for the other hens, they are gobbling up the seeds that we give them and not really eating any of the layers pellets, so we shall have to stop giving them seeds I think.  The pellets are specifically designed to give them all the nutrients they need so we must do all that we can to encourage them to eat these.

The Moult Continues

I tried to take photos of my very busy and always moving Scots Dumpy hen, Bizzy Lizzy.  Last week I got photos of the other two girls but Bizzy Lizzy just wouldn't stay still.  But this week I have succeeded!

She looks so funny without her tall tail feathers!

Chicken Bunting Quilt

I do a bit of sewing and quilting in my spare time.  Last year I bought a bundle of chicken themed fabrics from ebay without any sort of plan as to how I would use them.  This year I went to a sewing and quilting workshop day and one of the classes I took required a bundle of various fabric strips, so I was all set to create this:

Moulting Rosie admiring my chicken bunting quilt.

I am going to use this as a lap quilt for those days when I just need a little something to keep me snuggly.  I know it isn't the most attractive or beautiful quilt, but the fabrics do make me smile when I look at it.  The pattern has been featured in Creative Quilting magazine here in the UK and the author Fiona is the person who took us for this workshop.  If you click here you can see just how lovely her original quilt is.

Construction

First I cut the fabric into 2.5" strips and sewed them together in rows of 4.  If I were to make a bed quilt then rows of 5 would be more visually pleasing.

Using thin cardboard from a cereal box I cut out a triangle that was the same height as my sewn and pressed together strips.  The top angle of the triangle is 40 degrees and the base of the triangle has two 70 degree angles.

Laying the cardboard triangle - template - onto the strip sets I used my rotary cutter to cut out all the triangles.  I then cut some plain grey fabric into wide strips that matched the height of my strips and the triangle template and cut them into triangles too.

Then I sewed them together side-by-side.

Then once I had a collection of these I sewed lay them out to make sure I didn't have too many similar triangles near one another then started sewing them into rows, and then sewing the rows together.

Lastly I stitched the three quilt layers together using straight stitching about 1cm inside each triangle.  

the back

I didn't buy enough backing fabric for my quilt so had to do a bit of "cut and paste" but it looks okay and I quite like the solitary hen in the corner.

Hope you like my little chicken bunting quilt!

I still have some chicken fabric left over, so if you know of any other projects I could make, please share the link with me!