Snow in Florida

Actually, I'm not aware of any snow in Florida. But my quilting adventures of yesterday took me to Florida, despite the weather outside. This was my view for most of the day yesterday.

As for Florida, I'm quilting the flamingos created from a photograph I took while we were visiting Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park near Crystal River, Florida last year. Our friends Dick and Karen toured this place with us, and it was a fabulous visit.

After hunting for weeks to find visible manatees, we were finally able to see them here. We'd seen plenty in waters too murky for viewing, and so this was one big bucket list item crossed off.

It was here I took the picture that would become the flamingo quilt. It's been cropped to include just the two birds in the middle. I dearly wanted to include the bird on the left, but it made the quilt more difficult. They were laughing at a joke.

So here's the joke I heard them telling:

Q: What do birds do for fun on weekends?

A: Play fla-bingo.

Yeah...I made that last part up.

Okay, so no more fooling around. It's time to get quilting. The foot dragging that went on getting to this quilt nearly wore out the carpet. I so feared effing it up. The pink flamingo was already started, and so I continued on with him. There wasn't a lot to do there...just filling in with feathers.

But here's the acid test. How does it look from the back?

Hey! Not bad at all. And so I felt off and running at that. Next, I decided to quilt the eyes. This was pretty simple. I just stitched some radiating lines for the iris. Do flamingos' eyes look this way? I don't know, but my flamingos do. When you're using a flower for an eye, you give yourself some poetic license.

Here's how that looks from the back.

Okay, and then it was time to stitch the orange flamingo. I first stitched a feather encircling the eyeball.

From there, I started a new feather. This is probably the longest feather in history. It started just below the eyeball, extended down the neck, then to the left on the bird's body, and then spiraled around the outside of the body and continued into the center until the whole thing was filled in.

Phew! I think I took a break for lunch in the middle of that.

From there, I switched to black thread and just quilted some back and forth lines into the beaks.

For the orange bird, I switched to a deep reddish-maroon thread and did some elongated pebbling for the tongue.

Okay, now here was where the rubber met the road. I was so afraid to quilt the background because I was using white thread against a white background, but still using the same darker variegated thread on the back. I didn't want any of that dark thread pulling to the top. Also...I had to draw this bird. Can you see it? I think it's supposed to be a gull, but we'll just pretend it's a flamingo, okay? Dust off your imagination for this.

And because I'm terrible at drawing, I could only do this in one direction. That meant retracing my path with some humps. They just added to the appearance of clouds. When it was all done, it looked like this.

You have no idea the trepidation I felt at doing that part. This would have been finished a week ago had my gonads been a little larger. By day's end, it was all done except the aqua portion in the upper right and the border.

I'll admit as of this writing, I'm still kind of stuck on the border. It's such a pretty fabric. I'm afraid quilting it too much will lose the pattern. Also...what color should it be? That's rhetorical. I'm leaning toward a light pink. Also, I have an aqua colored thread that matches the aqua portion in the upper right. I could see using that too. My binding strips are aqua (I'm thinking as I'm writing). Aqua might be a good choice. You'll find out with the exciting conclusion in tomorrow's post.

Of course, I owe any quilting success to my quilting buddy. She was my little companion for a good part of the day.

The day went so well, I felt like celebrating with these little Warm Carrot Cakes with Cream Cheese Sauce. You might recall I made this a couple of weeks ago, but I had the wrong size ramekins. Since then, I've acquired the right size, and they turned out so cute. They're the size of a cupcake, and you could make them in a cupcake tin if you like. We had them for dessert with the cream cheese sauce. They're really simple to make and so tasty, you'll be glad there is only one serving per person. And here's something to consider: With the carrot in there, you can think of them as a vegetable if you like. Healthy and low calorie.

Okay, so more snow fell overnight. When we looked out this morning, it looked like this:

For as much as snow is unwelcome here in March, it is very pretty outside.

Some critter, not a cat, has been wandering through. It looks like a raccoon to me. Sorry, buddy. You're too early to eat the cherries.

The heather are doing their part for every blooming thing. At least somebody's ready for spring.

I know I am.

Today we need to go pick up a wine shipment. I think I'll be finishing up another section of the Bunny Garden this morning. After that, I'll get back to the quilting. I'm hoping to have the binding sewn on by day's end.