I am following
Leah Day's blog. Usually, my free motion quilting has been stippling or following outlines on the prints of the quilt. It is time to expand to more decorative quilting. I really had fun practicing butterflies, leaves, zigzags and loop-d-lous on the
Alzheimer touch quilts. Before I could get to sewing, first I needed to clean the aquarium.
Water photography. I had to block the flash to avoid the glare on the glass!
Tropical fish amuse me, they swim around all day looking for food. I love watching them, they get so excited at feeding time.
Back to the topic of the day. This past weekend project was practicing feathers. I was doing leaves a few weeks ago on my
Bernina 930 "Helga". So this time I used "Big Bertha", my Pfaff QE 4.
First, I hand drew several pages of feathers, trying to follow the continuous line like a sewing machine to make them flow. This
free motion feather tutorial is awesome.
For the leave wreaths, I drew a circle or the stem part first. Of course, I bought yet another quilting book.
I traced this pattern on parchment paper then sewed over without thread in the machine to make more copies.
By pinning the pattern to my quilt sandwich it was easier to make a feather wreath. Though picking the parchment paper out of the stitches was finicky.
The first photo is the top. I lowered the upper tension slightly from 5.2 to 4.0. Perhaps I should have lowered it a bit more. I'm mostly happy with the stitch quality.
Next I drew circle and the feathers directly on the fabric.
It was difficult to keep the feathers looking uniform and to join them.
Then Véronique and Scott came over for Sunday dinner. Véronique had a project for me. She works in a daycare. She wrote a puppet show for Halloween and needed costumes for two of the puppets.
This was lots of fun, as I have never made puppets costumes before.
So does anyone out there have any tips for free motion quilting feathers? How about unique ideas for Halloween costumes?
