Forward Motion

....progress on the quilt at last.  No more pillows or puppies to interrupt the process.

I have a 4 inch wide border on my quilt that I am filling with a continuous feather that curves around itself.  After the feathers were done I went back and embellished them with gold, metallic thread.  I was going to fill the stem with pebbles, but when I got finished with the gold thread I noticed that the stem really stood out and looked pretty cool.  No pebbles - great idea!  I am calling this quilt "Desert Mosaic" because it is made up of the colors that represent our Southwest:  red, orange, yellow, turquoise.  It is a pattern of geometric interaction.  What do feathers have to do with geometric design?  They are a foil to the harshness of contrast and hard lines.  As it turns out the embellishment makes me think of cactus with their spines, centipedes, spiders, tarantulas and snakes indigenous to  the desert.   That may be kind of weird, but that is where my brain took it.  What do you think?

Feathered border.

The feathers in each section are exactly the same or the reverse.  I am a symmetrical person.  My quilt is a symmetrical design.  They are not perfect.  I am only human and sometimes the needle takes over and I have to say, "OK" or rip it out.  How do I mark these long feathers and related designs on black fabric?

1.  I draw the designs out on tracing paper.

2.  For the feathers I transfer the basic shape of the stem onto an old manilla file folder and cut out the shape.  I use the old childhood magic of heavy pencil lines, turn the paper over and rub the back until the pencil line transfers, then cut it out.  You can also cut up the tracing paper and trace around it, but I prefer not cutting up my basic design if I don't have to.

Transferring design elements (see below for the individual small patterns)

TIP:  We have tons of useless folders from DH's working years but cereal box cardboard works too.  You can tape pieces together for a long form, and it is a lot cheaper than template plastic especially if you will never use these patterns again.

Large manilla patterns.  The big one is for the basic feather stems.

3.  I pin the cardboard pattern to the quilt (down into the cork board under my ironing board cover), and trace around the shape with my white ceramic pencil.

4.  From there I draw the additional elements by hand with a white ceramic pencil.

5.  For smaller elements that need to be very precise I make little patterns out of the manilla folder.

Small patterns for the final border.

I have another two inch border yet to do, but then I can move on to my first attempt at prairie points, with some experimentation for a different sort of point.  I'll share with you how it turns out, but that is down the road a bit.

Sew some happy seams this week.  I wish you fun making cheap patterns from a Captain Crunch box.