Starting on Feathers

Now that the body of the peacock is done, I needed to decide how I wanted to do the feathers. This has not been an easy decision. I did some mock-ups of some different styles to see what I liked.

I have decided on the coloring and fabric to use on the "eyes" of the feathers. I'm using a "peacock" blue, a deep purple, and an orange. The fabrics are mottled and they read as solid. These colors are very close to the actual colors in real peacock feathers. Also in real feathers, the eye is surrounded by a denser green, which I'm representing with striped lime green fabric. The remainder of the feathers are a variety of other green fabrics.

The tan fabric represents the stalks of the feathers, which are prominent in the original picture. The stalks break up the cacophony of greens and adds visual interest.

The first mock-up was the feather with the pointed "eyes" and although I liked it, I wasn't sure it would look right with the straight line construction juxtaposed with the curved lines of the peacock body.










 







The second mock-up had rounded eyes and less of the striped lime green. The rounded eyes look a bit more natural and I thought I liked it better.

I then got a little worried that all the different greens would look too busy and crazy. So I made a third mock-up using one color of green per feather. Each feather would have a different color of green because if all the feathers were made from the same green, it would be boring. Yet, I don't want the feathers to look like stripes, which I fear they might unless I chose colors that really blended well from one to the other.













So, I was really leaning toward rounded eyes with one color per feather. I had put all the mock-ups on the design wall and left the room to do some chores. When I returned, I looked at it again and totally changed my mind. I now prefer the pointed eyes and multi-greens. The pointed eyes show much more of the peacock blue color, and the stylized eyes do not detract from the body of the peacock. In fact when all is said and done, it may actually enhance it. We're going to find out!

Peacock body

***See the previous post for beginning of this new project.***

I actually finished this peacock body this past weekend, but because I posted last week's entry late, I waited a day before posting this today.

This is the peacock body for my new wall hanging. I drew out the design and used Ruth McDowell's freezer paper method for piecing. I bought the blue and purple fabric (the first fabric I've bought in a while!) and fussy cut the head and body pieces. The lime green fabric is something I had in my stash.

I made a few changes from the picture I took at the zoo. In looking at the enlarged picture, I felt the body needed to be bigger. When I reviewed pictures of peacocks on the web, it seemed that they normally have longer necks than the little fellow in my picture, so I went ahead and made him a little larger so he would stand out. Also, I took some creative license with the lime green portion. It's not usually as large as I made it, but I wanted the head to show off well. I figured if the head sat in the middle of feathers, it might get a little lost, but set against the lime green it does well.

One nice thing about Ruth McDowell's method is that you can press the seams any way you want. I chose to press them toward the body so it is slightly raised from the background. I like that effect. However, in order to keep them turned in the right direction, I (for now) basted them into place. Once the quilt is done, I'll remove the basting stitches. So don't worry - the peacock won't always look like he's sipping something through a straw.

Also, in the quilting phase, I'll connect the crest to the head using stitches.

One big mistake I made while sewing the head. When I clipped the curves, I slipped and cut too far into the beak. I couldn't fix it, so I had to redo the entire head. I'll have to be more careful!

New Project

No, this isn't a new quilt, but I hope it soon will be. This is a picture of a peacock I took at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo last summer. I was resting on a bench when this peacock came and put on a show for me! He strutted around for several minutes and I was even able to capture a short video of him.

I love the vibrant purple blues and lime greens, and I think this would make a wonderful quilt. If I can figure out how to construct it and if I finish it in time, I may try to submit it to the Denver National Quilt Show in May. Perhaps my practice with creating a mini-quilt in a week will help me here.

In the coming weeks, I'll be posting updates on my progress and explaining my process along the way.

My first step was to crop the picture to the size I wanted. It's shown above. The body of the peacock is at one of the focal points. (In a photography class, we learned to compose a picture by dividing it into thirds vertically and horizontally. The four resulting intersections are focal points, where the main subject should reside.)

My next step was to blow up the photo to the actual size of the quilt, which in my case is roughly 36x60". Microsoft Publisher allows one to create a poster and will print off an image onto as many 8-1/2x11" pages as needed. Here's my black and white version, now taped together on my wall. I've already started to mark it up a bit with cutting lines and notes for what I want to pay attention to.

I'll be starting with the peacock body for two reasons:
1) I think the head will be the most intricate and difficult part to piece because of some tiny pieces, and
2) all the feathers, and therefore the design, radiate out from the body.

I hope you will follow my progress. Wish me luck!

Rebecca