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