Crocheted Peacock

A few days back, I got a call from my friend who informed that a competition was announced in metro plus for crocheting. I checked the paper and it said that participant needs to crochet a peacock and the completed applique size should be 1 feet x 1 feet.

I wanted to give it a try. So i began my search for peacock images. Choosing the image was the most difficult part of the whole project because the final crocheted piece should be only 1x1 feet. I decided on  2 things before starting the project.
1. The background will be white
2. Feathers will be done separately and attached to the main piece.

Initially, I took the gauge with my crochet needle and woolen thread. I used 1.75 mm needle and normal acrylic / woolen thread for this project. For 1 feet, it took only 100 stitches with my 1.75 mm needle. So whatever image I select, the cross stitches should count to 100.

When I select an image and get the cross stitch pattern ( using a software ),  the size would exceed  1 feet. Then I had to search for another image. It nearly took 2 days for me to finalize on the image.

This was the image that I selected for crocheting.

This is the cross stitch pattern.

Everything was set and I started off with crocheting...

This is the back side of the work

After the main piece was completed ( I took a week to complete it ), I started the feathers. This was yet another challenge.  I searched and searched for the feather pattern, but I couldn't find the right one. So I came up with my own.

Here's the making of the feather. I planned to do 20 feathers. I made the inner round first, for all the 20 feathers. Then followed with each row around.

The thread that I used had 4 plys. When I used it as such, the feather was getting bigger by each round. So, I separated 2 ply and used them.

Finally, I made 20 feathers.

I laid them on the main piece roughly, and checked if the pieces were enough to cover the tail.

And here is the final crocheted peacock.