Bird's the Word

OK -- the title has nothing to do with anything except that this song was in my head while I composed this post. I have been procrastinating on my Rust-Tex quilt because I couldn't decide whether I should put more thread on the wing. I tried some fancy stitches on my machine and decided that a feather stitch (oh yeah) set with almost a satin stitch length would give the wing nice texture. I tried out a couple of different rayon threads: one a variegated black and silver, but the colors didn't change often enough and I got the results below:I didn't like the dark gray, so I went with black.
You can click on the pictures to see them even closer.