February Feathers

Whew, almost didn't get this one in on time - I kind of overbooked myself this last month (more about all that in a later post) - good thing this is a leap year so I had an extra day! 

This is the second month of the Free Motion Quilting Challenge from SewCalGal (thanks SewCalGal - this challenge is great fun!)  This month, our guest teacher Diane Gaudynski gave us a fine tutorial on how she quilts her amazing feathers (go look at her blog - it's amazing and inspiring!).

 Finally got to it this last weekend and discovered several very important facts - 

1. feathers are harder than they look (and they look pretty hard!)

2. I really need to practice that echo stitch more

3. when they say it's best to practice everyday, they know what they're talking about (whoever they are)

So this post starts out with a photo of one of my later efforts, just because (because the earlier ones are rather pathetic to the point of being humorous)

In spite of the fact that I started out by drawing what I hoped would be feathers, my first sewn efforts really looked more like strange spatulas and wriggling caterpillars and alien vegetables than like any kind of feathers. 

So I drew some more, and some more, and finally I printed out a copy of this month's tutorial feather and used the tracing paper.

Many pencil leads later, I tried again - with somewhat better success. 

I kind of went overboard with the echo stitching - but I really needed to practice.  And though the echos are still pretty uneven, they're improving!

All in all, I'm happy with my progress, but can see that there's a ways to go yet (those pesky caterpillars keep sneaking in there when I'm not looking!)!