The Year of the Feather

No, this is not some oriental New Year of some sort. That is what I dubbed this year back in January. I set out to conquer (well, maybe just get more comfortable with) feathers.
I know you can't see them at all, but I just quilted up this little flimsy and put feathers in the border.

To be honest, so far this year I have only become relatively comfortable with two types of feathers--the style I put on the black border above, which you can't see, and shaped feathers for setting triangles. Both of them are more visible in this little quilt that you may recall I made up back in February.

I have occasionally tried other types of feathers, like these little swirly ones...

...but the free form feathers have eluded me. This year SewCalGal is continuing to challenge us in FMQ, but instead of one challenge a month, there have been six challenges presented and we have until the end of Oct. to complete any three. The second challenge I have chosen is a tutorial on feathers by Joanne (Thread Head blog). We are to practice different feather types and find what works best for us. Then we make up a few quilt sandwiches "about the size of a piece of paper" and mark our feather spines and get quilting. We are to quilt background designs around the feathers and then bind the pieces.

I have filled a few sandwiches with practice feathers, but today I got down to the real thing. So far I have finished the quilting on this one piece...

I'm not too crazy about it, but it just needs the binding, and it will be good to have one under my belt.

My second one, below, doesn't have any background yet, but it is an improvement on the feather, I think.  Deep curves are still a challenge.

I'm toying with the idea of only using one or two designs on the background of this one.

I think I'll try one more sandwich after this and get a little more adventurous with the feather style.

I need to give a shout out to two very kind bloggers who quilt beautiful feathers and have gone out of their way to share information on their methods with me. Thank you Sharon (Grass Roots Quilting blog) and Debbie (Stitchin' Therapy blog) for your efforts in sharing your design sheets. I have referred to both many times, studying them, tracing them, and practicing the styles. It has helped immensely.

Just for fun, I tried to find the sandwich that had my first feather attempt from almost 2 years ago. It is nowhere to be found. I must have chucked that one. I do remember, though, that it didn't even remotely resemble a feather.

One other small thing I did this weekend was finish up two pincushions that have been partially made for months now. One is from the Schnibble Tuffet pattern, from Miss Rosie's Quilt Co., and the other was just a way of using up 6 leftover HST from another project. How do you use 6 HSTs? Answer--make 3 faux flying geese and put them into a pincushion. I made both of these into the "box" style cushion as demonstrated in my Tuffet tutorial on the tab above.
That churn dash is only 1 1/2" finished. I'm thinking it would make a great little ornament. : )

That is all for now.
Until next time,
Janet O.