Auditioning and a Bit of This and That

One of my very favorite birds is the Oystercatcher and we have an abundance of them down in the basin at Ft. Fisher when the tide is nice a low.  I managed to set my camera up wrong so didn't get some of the great pics I should have gotten!!  There were quite a few of them.  The amazing thing to me is that they were not at all annoyed by all the boats coming in and out but don't like people standing by themselves with cameras!!  They must be used to the boats and see no harm.

I couldn't resist this beautiful Turkey Vulture circling around my house.  At least he didn't land on my roof but did on another chimney and I know he doesn't deliver babies! When they are circling overhead, I always wonder if the end is near!

This is probably a Forster's tern (which I have seen down here) but he was very very white and looked like a Sandwich tern (which is not common down here).  Maybe it was the light, but he looked almost stark white.  Hmmm.

Anyway, back to the quilting!!  This is the final configuration I decided on for the beach piece.  It feels more balanced to me now.  I may reduce the sky part though and may add some features on top (I know there will be grass and reeds but don't know whether there will be shells or birds yet) before quilting.

I bought this pattern recently (Figure Flattering Quiltwear) and am trying to put together a pallette of fabrics from what I brought down here.  It calls for a gradation of nine values and one accent color.  On the photo of the jacket, the accent color is the bright turquoise.  This was my first iteration with the darkest value being black.  The green is the accent color.  Not sure if these are good colors for me but...

I then tried this sequence with the light turquoise on the side being the accent color.  Probably a little more conservative.

This is the gradation that is currently being contemplated.  The very last piece before the black seems to be a little light in value but it is such a nice transition from the black but I may have to rethink.  The rest of the values do work as I desaturated the pic completely as a test.  I noted that the values in the pattern itself were awfully close using this desaturation as well.  I have purchased and washed my flannel and am itching to get started and try out this new pattern.  As always I usually try to follow a pattern pretty rigorously the first time I use it.  I liked this one as it had a little more fit than the one I hae been using.  I, however, will definitely add a lining which isn't in the pattern.  I will probably also face the top and front and won't use binding but we shall see.