Back to Some Quilting After Christmas Sewing

I have discovered that the best birding down here at the pier is on the rainy miserable days when there are no sightseers or fishermen!!  I have never seen so many mature pelicans

lined up down there before.  It was really amazing.

I don't know whether I ever posted this one before it was cut up.  It was one of my perceived failures.  I tried cutting it into quarters and that didn't help.  Then I sliced again so I had eighths and bingo, I think this is a winner!  Will add white to finish off the spiral and then will see what to do next.  The design wall has several projects just getting off the ground and requiring further study!

And then I started on the insane quilt that I saw a friend post a link to on Facebook!  The quilt is by Edyta Sitar and I actually bought the book it was in as it wasn't obvious how to put it together even after figuring out what the individual parts were. The book directions leave a bit to the imagination as well which was a little disappointing -- it is obvious that it is a quilt that needs to be taught  by the author to get all the hints about how to put it together properly.  It is definitely not for a beginner!!  This is the first Snail's Trail block done.  The size (unfinished) is 4 1/2 inches and contains 20 pieces!!!  You have to make 142 of these.  I haven't found an easy way to make this go quickly as just cutting all those half square triangles took forever!!

Without looking at the book, I arranged the spokes.  Oops -- did them going in the wrong direction which would probably be okay but this is complicated enough without turning right handed trails into left handed ones.

So I turned them the way they were pictured.  I had made 15 Snail Trail blocks just to see how it would look

Here is how they start to go together.

And even more added.

This is a picture of the quilt that is in the book.  I am going to do the outside just slightly different as she has you cutting a bunch of those snail trail blocks in half -- they take too long to make to go cutting them up.  The quilt pictured is 72 x 76.  I have yet to decide whether I will go bigger or smaller.  We shall see.  They take forever to make and I haven't even started sewing the pieces together!