SAHRR Prompt 3 Animal Kingdom

This one gave me pause (paws--ha--just thought of that as I typed). Emily of The Darling Dogwood was our 'director' this week and she asked us to look to the animal kingdom for inspiration, be it animal named blocks, appliqué of an animal, pieced block that looks like an animal or animal fabric. Once again, Kathleen's post was a good one to get the creative brain juices flowing. After round 2, I had a tentative plan to somehow extend the double flying geese into this round to accentuate the diagonal 'pull' they gave. I also had planned to incorporate purple into this round. Here is where it is.

Thanks to Kathleen, my first thought had been to make one quarter of the bear paw block she did, set it on point about the double flying geese. I'm still second-guessing my decision not to do this, but the reason I didn't was because the measurements required would have meant my quilt would be already fairly large, and I didn't have a clue what I would do on either side of the bear paw. Animal fabric was another thought, so into the purple scrap box I went...nada. Into the less than half yard plastic drawers was next... whereupon I found the butterfly fabric, used many years ago in kaleidoscope quilts, and looking like Swiss cheese. I measured a few of the butterflies and found one which could barely work for a square-in-a-square. Now what?

I made the four butterflies, having them 2" finished, because I wanted this round narrower than the previous two. I set them in place and then went back to the scrap box to pull out a small chunk of the purple cats fabric for the cornerstones. Repeat the double border layer between perhaps? Two purples? I found the lavender batik in the scrap box, but there was only enough to do ½" finished, so I'd need 2 ½" widths of a darker purple. I laid a few of the strips I'd cut out on the design wall and stepped back.

I liked the lavender; it picked up the lighter purples in the butterflies.

That was early yesterday morning, with some sunshine sprinkled on the design wall. It is a pretty good true colours photo.

My personal rule for the SAHRR is to use as much from the scrap box (¼ yard and under) and the scrap drawers (½ yard and under) but I didn't have either a suitable dark purple or if I did, there wasn't enough. So I went to my stash shelves, remembering a bear paws chop from Island Batik that would be fun to use, though it was navy blue. This is when I discovered the eggplant, wine, navy and lighter shades of purples snakeskin chop, since it was in the blues and purple stack of batiks. Yes, I still keep my Island Batik fabrics yardage separate from the rest of my stash. Perfect.

Here is a closeup of the cats, a Buggy Barn Fabrics piece left over from an older project.

So, animal kingdom prompt met: butterflies, cats, and snakeskin fabrics! Prompt 4 is out today, so I'll hopefully get it done quickly. One thing that makes me happy is the butterflies fabric has some gold embossed in it, as does the navy navy, and there is black in each round including the four centre original blocks. The quilt top is now 35 1/8". I will have to deal with that odd 1/8" measurement perhaps in round 4.