My Journey with Quilting Feathers

You may have noticed that I am taking part in the Free Motion Quilting Challenge.
I thought it would be fun to do a post on my progress to date.  I think every quilter loves feather and I am no exception. 
When you are free motion quilting - it's the first thing you want to do.

I dug around and found my first attempts.

This was the very first piece I ever FMQ'd.  I didn't even have a proper open toe foot so I didn't use one at all.   I had a very basic attempt at a feather in the border.  It looks more like leaves but I was encouraged to keep going.

I cut a stack of 8" squares with wadding and set about practicing!!!

It's pretty tricky trying to sew the plumes round a curve.  All the time I was practicing feathers, I was working on other quilting patterns such as stippling and just trying to get a feel for the machine.

I used a stencil to mark this circular feather and tried abysmally to follow the lines.  I was having all kinds of tension trouble too.  I gave up with the stencil as I preferred it when the fabric wasn't marked.
Now I only mark the spine.

This was an attempt at feathering an a narrow border.

More feathers - I think you can see an improvement here.

Back of the quilt.

This is from my Bird of Paradise wall hanging.  I quilted feathers on appliqued feathers!

More feathers that don't really look like feathers in a border.

These are feathers on a hand dyed cushion I made.  Think I was beginning to get the hang of it.

They are definately beginning to look like feathers.

More feathers on another hand dyed cushion.  I loved how these turned out.

Feathered sashing on the Tallships quilt.

I made a series of mugrugs and practiced going round corners.

I made progress here - each one was better than the last and plumes had a better shape to them.

More feathers in a border on the Lantern quilt.

These are feathers on a wall hanging that I worked in January.

I was a bit more adventurous here and worked pebbles into the spine.

Then in February, Diane Gaudynski did the turorial for the 2012 Free Motion Quilting Challenge.
I decided to work my sample on satin.  Something just clicked into place and I was able to produce this :

I was over the moon - this was something I had wanted to achieve for a long time.

Then I worked a second sample - this time on silk and I tried outline quilting to fill the background.

Now I am working on this ;

I hope this post gives some encouragemnt to those of you who are just starting out with free motion quilting.
You can see how far I have come in just 11 months.  I cannot wait to start incorporating my new found skills into my quilts.

My top tips would be to get a pair of quilting gloves and keep practicing.  Draw feathers on paper whenever you get the chance.  It really does help.
Most importantly though - have fun and remember 'Rome wasn't built in a day'!

See you all next time.
Rhianon.