Making the Mermaid - K's quilt

My friend K and I are a lot alike - we're both landlocked mermaids who wish we could spend more time at the beach and near the waves.  I knew I couldn't pull this quilt together without adding at least one personal mermaid touch - and so I hunted down THIS pattern over at fandominstitches.com and put her together.  (side note:  I would love to do a set of these, one in reverse for some bookends maybe?)

I always start by laying out fabrics to play with color and contrast.  The pattern has her nekkid-ish, so I revamped it a little and added a clamshell (that was seriously a lot of work - if I do add these as bookends on something I'm doing, I'll plan to give her a washed out green textured skin and call it a day)

3 1/2 hours of work later - and I finally got her put back together.  I always have this angst about remembering to give myself the 1/4 inch seam allowance so I can sew it back together!  but it worked.

Isn't she lovely?  She measures out about 7.5 inches tall, which made putting her in to a block with some of our fun gift quilt mail pretty easy! :)