Peacock!

Peacock is now complete!  Hours of piecing fun, and a few moments of sheer panic, but it is finally complete.  As I was getting down to the last pieces, I had about a dozen templates that weren't cut out yet that I figured were part of the background and I'd cut them as I needed them. But when I was finishing the last of the tail feathers, I realized that I only had 6" of fabric left, plus some odds and ends. Not nearly enough for all those templates.  I didn't know what to do, and actually walked away from it at that point for the night.

I thought about it, and hoped the missing bits would be outside edges and I could maybe make the quilt smaller to use only the fabric I had, because I knew I'd never find this fabric online anywhere. It's about 4 years old.

When I went back to it the next day, I looked at the pattern to see if I was right about where the pieces would go - and realized that I didn't need all 12!  Some of them were for one of the alternate layouts, and I only needed 2 more pieces of background fabric. The largest of them was almost exactly 6" wide. It fit perfectly on the strip I had left, I cut out the 2 templates and breathed a side of relief.  Of course, binding might be an issue, since I certainly would not be using background fabric for that.

In the end I opted for facing the edges. I was going to bind in one of the blues, but decided I didn't want a harsh transition there.  So here he is all quilted and faced.  Straight line quilting around the tail feathers, and some scallops that I hope look like feathers in the body of the peacock.

The pictures aren't very good, so I'll have to try again when the lighting is better.