Happy new year - the peacock is proud

Four days before Christmas, I finally basted the quilt.  I had to use the blower on the concrete floor under the house before I could baste :-)  too many leaves have been falling, due to the hot, dry summer.

For some reason, I also decided to try my hand at a low volume quilt.  Well, not quite low volume.  This was not the final layout.

400 x 4 1/2 inch squares.  These are now all sewn into four patches and grouped in rows.  I don't know when I'll get back to it, as I don't really have a purpose for it.  Have to wait and see what happens

Anyway, I started quilting the peacock a couple of days before Christmas, as my niece would be here on Christmas day and I wanted it to be partly quilted, so she didn't think I had been slacking off.  Everything was going swimmingly, until ............  Don't you hate it when that happens?  Unpicker becomes best friend.

I'm slowly finishing the quilting around each eye.  This is a modified plume feather shown in Angela Walter's book.

This is where I'm up to.  Only six more eyes to quilt around, then fill in the blanks, top and bottom.  I'm not yet sure if I'll quilt  the eyes themselves - maybe just a simple spiral.

Quilting of the body - I haven't done anything yet with the beak, eye or legs.

 Detail of the tail quilting.  Where there are large gaps between the eyes, I have quilted a spiral and pretended that it is another eye.