Wednesday 31 December 2008

FMQ Day 6 Feathers, feathers, feathers

I have been dreaming about free motion quilting feathers! I have been wondering why my feathers don't look right. I decided I would draw out some feather designs on paper. The first ones I did were just like the ones I had been stitching not very good. I kept at it until I was happy with some that I had drawn. By doing this I had a better idea of not only where I was going wrong, I knew that already, but what I needed to do to rectify it. Would it work in thread?

Here are todays practice pieces. I feel as though they are getting better.


Whether it shows in the images I am not sure but even compared with yesterdays samples I can see an improvement but perhaps it's just wishful thinking.
I certainly felt confident enough to try a really curved design. You can see the concave part of the curve has long skinny plumes - not good- but for a first and only attempt it's not too bad is it? At lease my plumes are beginning to be more curvaceous and less skinny and jaggedy. I still find it difficult to hug the previous plume, I wonder if an open toed embroidery foot would help? I think it might. I also raised the pressure on the presser foot which helped.


I even felt that one feather was good enough to embellish. This idea is from Patsy's Free Motion Fun With Feathers DVD Volume 1. She calls this section Splay Embellish Feathers. Of course the colours could be better but it's a practice piece and I am delighted with it. If you look closely you will see I found it difficult to retrace my stitching line. A little more practice will sort that out though.

My thanks to Deb for her very helpful comment. I may try that suggestion on one of my feathers and see how it works for me.

Thank you to everyone who visits my blog and takes the time to comment. I appreciate your help, advice and support. I hope in some way you will be inspired to try some of things I have posted on my blog and that my tutorials are useful to you. I am certainly inspired by the blogs I visit and appreciate the work and ideas people share.

I hope you and your family have a wonderful, prosperous and happy New Year.

See you all in 2009.

7 comments:

Vicki W said...

You have made some great progress this week!

Anonymous said...

The plumes are definitely coming along - I especially like the use of embellishment in your final sample. Just realised how QJ that sounded:)!

rlbates said...

Wow! You are making great progress.

kathy said...

These feathers are wonderful. I really like the embellishment idea. Happy feathering new year!

Carol said...

Thank you ladies. Checking on the images on my blog today I can see an improvement. I am glad I documented the past few days in images it has helped give me a boost as I see some progress.

Elma in Lochwinnoch said...

You do get there with practice!
Your feathers are looking wonderful.
It is fun to do it the way Patsy does it isn't it? You can relax and just go for it :-)
All the very best for 2009.

Uniquely Yours Creations said...

Wow Carol! You are doing a fantastic
job! I'll have to check out Patsy's
CDs. Lin