. . . . . . Enjoying the journey of quilting

Friday, February 3, 2012

Free Motion Quilting Challenge February 2012 - Tah Dah Feathered Plumes

I want to thank Darlene (SewCaGal) for managing the Free Motion Quilting Challenge 2012. Having personally manage many group efforts - swaps, challenges and group quilts I know first hand the amount of time involvement there is when managing them, especially with the on-going communication that occurs. What I have done does not begin to compare since I have not managed one where there are 2,000 participants as there are in the FMQ Challenge 2012! That is amazing!

Tah Dah! My Feathered Plumes after much and exhausting practice. It was an all day affair! In yesterday's post I wrote about having to slow down my brain! Click on brain to learn how I went about doing that whatever is left of it after practicing all day! If you have seen the picture of the quilter's brain floating around facebook you should know I was too tired to even have it processing correctly. My hubby asked me what I did while he was working and I showed him the above and said it took me all day to learn how to do this thinking he couldn't possibly understand, but he did and even encouraged me. Whew!

Though I had implemented many ideas that Diane Gaudynski gave plus my own, my plumes just were not looking like plumes, not in my drawings and not in my practice sandwiches. Oh! Diane thank you so much for your wonderful tutorial! It was fabulous. I even wrote many of your tips down in my FMQ Sketch Book. Yes - I know I am rabbit trailing. Back to the misshapen plumes. Finally, I drew with pencil lightly the shape of a finished plume and then began to pencil in my feathers to fit the guidelines. I learned sometime during the practice affair that I needed to see lines so I had something to focus on while stitching. And. . . . because I was getting tired. . . when stitching the plumes I rested a few seconds after each feather to refocus on the direction I needed to go.

My Practices

My FMQ Sketch Book


Quilt as You Go - January's Meets February's


My reworked FMQ Challenge 2012 Quilt as you Go

After posting the picture above I noticed that my feathered plumes piece was not straight. During the do over I decided the blue/aqua was too dominant. I centered the folding star and added another layer of triangles with decorative stitching and chose the batik red/orange for a border.

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18 comments:

  1. Your feathers are awesome. I have been practicing my drawing on my dry eraser board. I think feathers can make a quilt.

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  2. Your feathers really do look great!

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  3. I love your notebook - nice idea. The feathers are great. I love how you've been able to get them close together and maintain a good echo. Mine goes all over the place! :)

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  4. Your feathers are beautiful! Mine have a long way to go!!

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  5. Hi Joanie. Hello from your newest follower. Your feathers look fantastic. I have a big artist sketch pad which I doodle feathers in all the time. I think it really helps.

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  6. Great success....your feathers look wonderful!

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  7. Great. What beautiful feathers you've made.

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  8. Great job and thanks for passing on your learning experiences.

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  9. Wonderful feathers! I have a lot more practicing to do to get to your level! ~Jeanne

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  10. Pat yourself on the back Joanie, your feathers turned out great! The practice and sketching were well worth it.

    warm quilt hugs, sue in CA

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  11. Joanie - I saw on another blog that you posted something about using Golden Threads. Do you just pin that paper to the fabric? Thanks ~Jeanne

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  12. Your feathers are amazing. I am yet to start even drawing! Love your idea of keeping the FMQ notebook. Thanks for sharing.

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  13. I do admire your talent
    Cacnn

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  14. Ooooh, wow, you did a beautiful job with your feather!

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  15. Fantastic! I used printfriendly.com to print out Diane's pictures, too...instead of filing them now in my fmq 3 ring binder, I like your idea of cutting and pasting the photos right into your sketchbook - much more useful - thanks!

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  16. this is awesome. I love your work

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