Gecko scales

This is what I'm thinking of doing on the gecko. I was reading a book about maths in nature, 'What shape is a snowflake' (I was in the library doing silent reading with a year 9 class so I was modelling good library behaviour!) Anyway, it must have been meant to be because I was struggling to come up with a way to quilt the gecko and what do you know, the answer was in this book! They have hexagonal scales, as do snakes and other lizards.

I will try to do my quilting a little bit neater on the quilt but I quite like the irregular shapes in my sample. I also wanted to experiment with making the scales different sizes and I think that worked quite well.  I started with the line down the spine and as long as the first hexagon is the right size, keeping the rest in the same proportion was fairly easy.  I want to have them large on the top of the head, smaller as they go through the neck and then larger again in the body gradually getting smaller as they go into the tail.  As I get close to the edge of the body and down the legs, I'll change the hexagons into circles to make it easier to quilt.

The head in my sample is about the same width (but shorter) than in the quilt.  I've got it on my metric cutting board so that is a 1cm grid.  I think the size will work on the quilt.  I'm almost too frightened to quilt it!  I love it so far and I don't want to muck it up!!  Should I go for it?