Cotton Robin round 3

Round 3 of the Cotton Robin bee came some time before school let out, and I had plenty of time to finish it and get it out to it's happy owner. This is how it started:

Photo credit to Cotton Robin blog

But it went through two rounds before arriving at my doorstep, so there were some pretty awesome quilters feeding ideas to me through their work. Of course, no one told me what to do in words. Let's just not open that squirmy can.

The first border is the colorful balloon one with a black background. The second border is the HSTs in yellow and white. First I tried a black binding, thinking it would frame the piece, but I didn't like the additional darkness. In the end I had to go with the yellow for an extra punch of brightness. Plus, I had a yellow that came from the same line...sort of the fabrics making the decision there. But whatever. I liked it. 

Quilting is all custom quilting: SITD around the bird with some weird feathery lines that mimic the print on the body, clouds in the blue background, bubbles in the balloon border, and curvy lines in the HSTs. 

The bird needed only one more detail: an eye. You can see in the pictures above that a little beady eye really brings it to life. Strange how a beady eye on one creature is perfect, on another not so much. Take an alligator--when the only thing sticking out of that murky water are those beady eyes, it's creepy.

So this guy got a beady eye (literally a brown bead). I took all kinds of close ups of the bird's face with that eye, but not one the whole quilt. I have no idea why but it's likely the same reason I didn't snap the back of the quilt. Yea, yea, goofy again. You're probably tired of that story, but it's the truest one and I'm sticking to it.  

That wrapped up my work on the Cotton Robin. The only thing left for me was to wait for my own quilt to arrive. It has, so there's a round 4 coming your way in a day or so. How's that for a tease? Are you curious?