feather quilt

I used strips of leftover fabric from the Dancing Daisy quilt earlier this month (two quilts in one month! Whoot!) to make the feather design here. Yep, I planned out my fabric use so I would be able to get two quilts out of it. The gray dot fabric is the reverse side. The pattern is from Anna Marie Horner's free pattern.

The chalk loops are my attempt to plan the free-motion quilting. I was going to use loops for the whole thing, but after the first bobbin ran out of thread, I could not make the machine tension even again. So it worked right for a while...and then not at all. I picked out the quilting bit by bit, and then just used straight-line quilting with my walking foot. Here and there it's not as straight as a professional would make it, but <shrug>.

I thought I was being so clever when I laid out the fabric strips, angling them so I would get maximum fabric use (no throw away bits).  What I failed to accommodate is that when you turn the pattern piece over (to make the left and right mirror image of the feather two sides), the slant of the pattern piece leans to the opposite direction--so you need to angle your strips in the *opposite* direction. Make two sets of strips, each leaning opposite ways. Well, I was half clever about it, anyway. Does that count? My photo shows how the upside-down pattern piece leans the wrong direction.

I took these photos in the evening in the shade, so you do not see the colors correctly. The background is definitely tan, not gray or greenish.

This photo taken indoors shows the colors correctly.

It's always so satisfying to add the binding. I read quilting blogs where the person hates to add binding, but I think it's great to sit on the couch with a quilt spread open doing the final hand sewing. In the winter, anyway.

Done! It's about 55"x55", so a good sized throw. I haven't decided whether to put it in my etsy shop, or just wait to sell it at the Saturday market. What do you think?