First Foray Into FMQ Feathers

Two nights ago with the help of my mom (Thanks Mom!), I pin-basted the Pansy Sampler Quilt. The pin-basting wasn't quite as tedious as usual, because as I pinned, I kept studying the various blocks imagining how I would apply my new found FMQ knowledge obtained from the books, Free Motion Quilting Made Easy, and Hooked on Feathers, which I blogged about here. 

So last night, I shoved the Pansy Sampler into the Juki and mentally psyched myself up.  Yep, I felt totally dangerous!

I guess the psyching up worked, because I jumped in deep.  It wasn't my intention to start out with feathers, although I was most anxious to try them.  However, there is only one block with a black background in the sampler, and the Juki was already loaded up with black thread, and I had planned feathers for that block.....  I took it as a sign.

Here is where I started.  The feathers don't look quite as pretty as those in the book, but for my very first attempt, I'm not dissatisfied.

(Sorry the pictures look washed out, but I have a feeling the quilting might be hard to see without the flash.)

Then I moved to a larger section in the background.  My original intent had been to fill the space with ever larger feathers as I moved from the center outward, but after I got to a certain size, making the feathers seemed a bit more difficult.  I decided larger feathers would be a different skill for a different day, and so I brought the motif back in at the top.  So far, so good.



The only problem is that I wanted the background totally filled, so I made some feather "sprouts" off to each side



It took me about 45 minutes to do these two little sections, but I could tell it was getting easier the more I did it, so I suspect it will go faster as I get more practice.  The other consideration time-wise, is that I didn't have to do any marking at all to create these intricate looking feathers.  That is definitely time saved.  Frankly, even with hand-quilting, I've never done any quilting this intricate because I didn't want to take the time to mark the quilt.  (I think I could use the same principles for making feathers in hand-quilting too.) 

I've always loved making tops, but got bogged down at the quilting phase, because I wasn't able to create extravagant designs on the machine, and hand-quilting takes a very long time.  I have a feeling that is all about to change.  I am ecstatic.