Beautiful Blue Jay

The Forest QAL seems to be my newest obsession.  The blocks are challenging and they take a while to complete but the pay off is HUGE.  I am loving how each of them is turning out.  A few weeks ago Joanna at Shape Moth created a Eurasian Jay for us to make.  The colors were not exactly something I wanted to duplicate in my quilt.  I have been having fun with the teal green and didn't really think the colors of her bird suit my quilt.  I did however, like the fact that she created him to match a bird that they have in her area near Poland.  Think, think, think...
I decided to surf the web and look at the colors of  jay birds.  Not the black and white striped ones behind bars but some real birds.  We have blue jays in our area and found a picture that not only showed one in flight but the background color was ideal for my quilt!!!

My inspirational picture is copyrighted  but you can see it but you can view it here.  It is absolutely gorgeous and this blue jay's pose in flight is so much like Joanna's pattern that it was just a matter of picking out fabrics to bring him to life.  Really not the easiest task.  I still struggled with fabric selection.  I must have done a fairly good job of it though because the ladies at work thought this was the best block I've ever done and they have seen most of my work.

Here is my Beautiful Blue Jay:

I added some leaves like he is taking off from a tree or flying close to one because the fabric so matched my background I couldn't resist adding it and I really like the visual interest it adds to the block.  I struggled the most with wing colors and I started with the black and blue part of the wing and made the wing tips that are white a little shorter to mimic the real thing a little closer.   I would have loved to have two rows of white tips like the real bird does but decided it wasn't worth all the extra piecing.  Once I had that section done I was sure I had blown the coloring so I switched to gray and blue on the next sections and once again thought I had blown it.  At this point I thought of re-doing the whole thing but didn't want to invest another day into it.  I decided to bite the bullet and leave it as is and put it all together.  Once I had done that and looked at my inspirational picture again, I decided I loved how it turned out.

Hours later when showing one of the many girls at work my pretty block, I noticed the real error of my ways...The second black strip down from the left on his wing section is his beak fabric and doesn't belong on his wing.

I won't tell him if you don't.  It will be our secret.

Have fun and keep stitchin'