Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Free Motion Challenge - February's Tutorial

This is my February Free Motion Challenge block. I hesitate to post my block because I love feather quilting, and consider this to be my worst feather quilting block E V E R!
The teacher for this month's tutorial is Diane Gaudynski. It is a wonderful tutorial and I wanted to follow everything the way she does it, and I tried to do each part of the technique as she instructed.
I learned two things:
1) I cannot get the shape I like by feathering from the bottom to the top. I have always feathered from top to bottom, and maybe you can't teach an old dog new tricks?!?
2) I don't like the space between each plume. I like to retrace the edge of the previous plume. I like how it looks and I like how it feels to quilt. But I really tried to do it Diane's way just to see what it was like.
I had some issues with the tension also. Here is one of the feathers from the back...see the clumps of thread?!? And it seems like there are bits of batting poking through?  Maybe that is because I am using my hand painted fabric?
I wasn't even happy with my paper practising in my notebook...yuck! 
To show you (and remind myself!) that I do know how to quilt feathers, you can visit this old blog post from 2 years ago about a quilt that I feathered for a friend. Oh well, I know that I love feathering and it did make me want to get out a quilt and start feather quilting, so that's a good thing!
If you scroll to the end of Diane's tutorial, you can visit some of the more than 200 blog links of quilters who tried feather quilting this month and see how they made out.

5 comments:

Janet O. said...

I have practiced a couple of feathers, but I haven't really even slightly mastered the technique and was going to try again tomorrow before linking up. I thought this was a bit of an advanced challenge so early in the year for people who are true beginners to FMQ--which I know you are not. And I know you really can do feathers! : )

SewCalGal said...

You did a great job. Your echo stitching is amazing and your plumes look lovely.

SewCalGal
www.sewcalgal.blogspot.com

Béa said...

I think it was very hard this month for feather like this.
You did a great job, before & after !

Ellen said...

Your feathers look pretty good to me!

Merilyn said...

You did better than I could do Kathy! so that's saying something LOL! I love feathers but can't draw, so I would be woeful at this!!! I guess it just takes practice and you have to find the method that is comfortble for you, I think you did great with your practice piece, at least they look like feathers, and of course being a solid fabric every little error shows up, on a printed fabric you wouldn't see too many small glitches!!!!