Some More Progress

A visiting Mute Swan at Carolina Beach Lake - a juvenile I am sure and not a frequent visitor on this pond.

This is a Greater Scaup which is also not a frequent visitor -- used to see a lot of the Lesser ones.  There were two pairs today.

A couple of Hooded Mergansers which I don't usually see at the lake as well.

For some reason, we are seeing Kildeers all over in many places you don't normally see them including my backyard during the snow!

There was a huge influx of Robins right after the big storm.

I am making significant progress on this quilt.  I only have to do about 25 more of the Snails Trails blocks to get that part done.  I am also starting to finish the whole rows but haven't sewn the rows together yet.

Only one more of the long full rows and a few blocks to finish out one of the smaller rows.d

I have decided to finish the quilt differently than she did and it will be easier than I anticipated.  I am doing a background colored hexagon half instead of the darker fabric, then adding a rectangular 2 inch background piece and half triangles on the main motif.  A small square in the corner finishes it off.  This way I don't cut into any of the Snail's Trails blocks.

She finishes hers off by cutting those top motifs and having half hexagon motifs.  The quilt looks incredibly busy on my wall and adding more background seems to be more soothing to me so I will be also adding an additional 2 inch wide background piece around the whole outside.

Here is some auditioning of the above idea of a border on my design wall.  I will probably add an additional border of thing turquoise and then a darker blue or purple.  Things aren't sewn together.  I am also going to change out that top Snails Trail on the middle motif -- just aesthetics -- will just invert the row as I haven't sewn it to the one on the left and I will be more careful in the placement of some of the darker lights and darker darks.

If I were ever crazy  enough to do this again, I would also make half Snail Trails on those outside blocks -- i.e, only put the dark on one side rather than spiraling out in two directions from the middle.

Of course, you can clearly see the difference between her quilt above and mine in the direction of the spirals.