I wrote a tutorial on developing your own style for free motion quilted feathers for the SewCalGal 2013 Free Motion Quilting Challenge, and thought I would share the evolution of my quilting samples here. Click on the names of the pieces for more details about each piece.
For this Vase and Feathers piece I quilted feathers with rounded ends, but tried a different (for me) shaped tip -
Kind of elongated diamonds. I also did the quilting in two different colours, but just different shades, so it is barely noticeable.
This Stupendous Stitching and Whole Cloth piece was next -
I used the same elongated diamonds for the tips of the feathers, and the same round ends,
but this bottom feather came out with a big tip and a more pointed end. I really liked that one, so for the next piece I went with that.
The piece also had feathers that didn't overlap - normally I kept the lobes of the feathers separate -
But I overlapped the lobes in this section -
And liked the look of that too. The lobes are also uneven in size.
Next came this Crazy Quilt with Whole Cloth Frame -
I made the ends of the feathers pointy,
And the tips of the feathers noticeably bigger. I also tried to make the lobes even, and gradually increasing and decreasing in size.
I also included more overlapping of the lobes. This turned out to be one of my favourite pieces that I have ever made!
For the above piece I tried dramatically different colours of threads for the main design and the background. It has the same pointy feather ends, large tips and overlapping lobes, because I love that look. I divided the background into three sections with a curved line, and quilted each section differently. Because these are such small samples it is good to try out different backgrounds.
I quilted the above piece to try out a quilting design with feathers radiating from a centre circle, because I am planning a large whole cloth quilt and thought that this might be a design I would like to use - the designs are all still evolving!!
I hope you will give my challenge on the SewCalGal 2013 FMQ Challenge a try, you might be pleasantly surprised with your results!
Thanks so much to SewCalGal!!
Have a great day and thanks so much for stopping by!♥