Beach quilt coming together

(Beach scene quilt pattern available here now)

This evening I pieced the sand, joined it with the breaking waves to the water, added the starfish border, then joined the underwater sections to it.

Each time I make a beach quilt I learn more, especially about the use of individual fabrics. This time I realised that the bubbly sand-coloured fabric detracts from the breaking waves print - in future I'll save it for beach quilts such Footsteps, where I don't use that breaking waves fabric, and the sand is placed above the water in the quilt. If I'd noticed it earlier, I'd've replaced it, but it's not worth the effort at this point.

I then drafted the sun in EQ7 (so much easier to draft this sort of block than in the old version!). It's designed to be foundation-pieced like the rest of the quilt, and has no curved seams as a regular Radiant New York Beauty block would. Those arcs are all crossed-out; they were only there for the purposes of creating the block. My foundations are quite a mess; this is partly because the required size of 8.5in square is too big to print on a single letter-size sheet, but also because my printer refuses to feed evenly at the moment, and prints on an awkward angle - often also distorted, which is a real pain!

So I've had to tape several pieces together to get the 2 units I want. I can't sew them until they're traced nicely ready for the pattern, but I'll happily use my cobbled-together pieces once that's done! They will actually end up two not-quite squares, to eliminate having a seam up the middle of the sun's centre ray.