I Spy a Rose Garden

I started my quilting journey as a traditional quilter as many of us have. It was great fun learning the patterns, the basics but by my third quilt I was wanting something different. At the very least, I wanted to design my own piece and not use a pattern.

Cameo Rose (all hand done) gave me the opportunity to do that. I was still antsy with having far fewer fabric choices than we have today but fabric dyeing came in the next quilt. I love creating art quilts but still and once in a while go back to a traditional type quilt.  I had collected on my fabric shopping adventures, a beautiful line of Moda fabrics- so much in fact, I was able to make 3 quilts from it. I still have some left - do I dare make another small one? The first one is finished - Pink Chiffon which I posted here a while back. The second one I just finished - I Spy a Rose Garden. This quilt had such pretty, soft colors I thought it needed some feather quilting.

I'm in love with Patsy Thompson's line of DVDs on machine quilting. She is incredibly talented, innovative and an excellent instructor. She suggests you make samples of the many kinds of feathers you can do. What you see here is just the tip of the iceberg but it gave me a feel for doing them and the many choices I had. This is the very basic free form feather.

 Patsy suggests you make a bunch of fabric sandwiches 9" x 12" to work on and they're ready to go. This one has a red arrow pointing to the area I want to highlight. You can see not all are curved feathers but some are "beaked" on the end. This is the "whimsical" feather.

 I love the heart and enjoyed doing this one the most, it just didn't work with my design that well.

 The"inlined' feather uses 2 different color threads, the stronger one on the inside of the plume. It's very effective and makes it pop.

 This is the "splay embellished" feather which I also liked but perhaps a little strong for the piece I was using it on.

"I Spy a Rose Garden" is finished. The I Spy pattern I've used many times to make chilcren's quilts. It makes up so well in bright colors but also in soft patterned fabric.

  I decided to go with the inlined feather which has double plumes but in different colors. I used 2 colors but so close in color and value, it's hard to tell and also the effect I wanted to keep the softness of the look.

Fun, fun, fun....now back to my dye pots and silkscreens .

Pink Chiffon and Feathers

I've been finishing up projects. I don't want another pile of UFOs to start off 2015. I'm starting with smaller projects first. This is one of the pieces I did at my retreat this year....

 ....the third one using the Moda fabrics I purchased years earlier. This is quite a small piece -  23" W x 32" H

 I thought it might need a decorative, fancier quilting design to add more interest to the surface. I love feathers and decided to give it a try.

 There are 3 long rows of feathers filling in the entire area and I'm really happy with the way they turned out.

I used Patsy Thompsons wonderful DVDs to learn everything there is to know about sewing feathers. I love these DVDs and highly recommend them. Each DVD is 2 hours long and there are some that have 2 discs with 4 hours of information. Patsy is a natural born teacher and guides you through the process with humor and expertise. She also has a very unique way of doing feathers making them so much fun. Visit her blog to see more of her beautiful work and learn about her DVDs.