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!
