FMQ Tutorial, by Diane Gaudynski “Echo Feather Plume”

I'm participating in 2012 Free Motion Quilting Challenge hosted by Sew Cal Gal.   February's design is feathers by Diane Gaudynski.  In free motion quilting,  feathers have been my nemesis for a long time.  I so admired them on the quilts of others and failed miserably in my attempts to replicate a feather with my sewing machine.

I'm what Diane Gaudynski calls "feather challenged". 

I have always admired Diane's feathers and often told myself, "I want to quilt feathers like hers when I grow up".  Her tutorial is extremely well written and photographed.  It is excellent!  I read over the instructions several times and studied the pictures.

 Then I practiced drawing feathers.

Drawing feathers and tear drops.  I made a whole page of just tear drops in various directions and sizes.

 

 I tried to keep the feathers tear drop-shaped and the lines smooth.

 I practiced more.

 

 

 

 I added stems and extra plumes.

 

 I drew approximately 80 pages of feathers.

 

 I'm posting these drawings to show my feather shapes got better the more I practiced.

 Finally, I was ready to add the sewing machine.

Again I practiced on several scraps before doing my quilt block on my challenge quilt.

This is the front side.

The back side is unbleached 100% cotton muslin, the purple vareigated thread is 100% polyester, the pink is Coats trilobal 100% polyester embroidery thread.

 

 

 

 

Enough practice time to quilt my block.

I used my Pfaff Creative 2 sewing machine, with a dynamic spring motion quilting foot, dropped feed dogs, set the stitch length to zero, a straight stitch needle plate and 80/12 Schmetz universal needle.

 The white side is the back.

 

While quilting this block, I decided that sewing the feathers was way more fun than echoing so I added more plumes as I echoed.

 

 

 This is the finished block.  I'm delighted with it. 

 

 

 

 Close ups of top stitching

 Happy quilting all.