Quiltshaker

I think "Excellence in Quilting" says it all. Wonderful quilt.

1screech

Beautiful quilt and the feathers are wonderful. I hoe when I grow up, I can make feathers like yours on my Tin Lizzie. Any tips would be greatly appreciated. Great job!

sue.ross.8782

You deserve every ribbon. Congratulations.

ScrapQuilter

Congrats............ Very nicely done. You must have worked day and night to get that quilt done in that length of time.
It should be called the labor of love quilt.......

darlin

took my breath away awesome!

buddy'smom

I can see why, your quilt & quilting is just gorgeous.

char634w

Congratulations, all those awards are well deserved.... it is gorgeous !!! Thanks for sharing.

judy363905

Congratulations. Well deserved ribbons for sure.

Judy in Phx, AZ

laurlync

Suzanne, I didn't use the templates to make the flying geese. The geese blocks finish at 1 1/2" x 3" and I used the second method shown here http://www.connectingthreads.com/tut...hods__D15.html which makes 4 geese at a time. I cut the background squares 2 3/8" and the red/blue squares 4 1/4". (Note my geese have the red/blue in the center and the tute has white in the center.) I did sliver trim all the geese and even culled a few that weren't quite right.

For the star pieces, triangles and odd corners, I made plastic templates. Then I cut strips of background fabric wide enough to place the templates so I was cutting on the straight of grain indicated. (If you cut a little wider than needed, you can flip the template so the triangles are "pointing at each other" and get more triangles per strip. I used muslin so there was not right or wrong side.) I used a pencil to lightly trace the template, reposition and trace again until I had as many as I could trace on the strip. Then I stacked several strips and used my ruler and rotary cutter to cut on the lines. Worked really well and went quickly. I hate using templates too, but this was easy.

I would spend some time making flying geese and trimming before my stack got too high. As long as you trim all your blocks, this quilt goes together really nice. I took notes when making the quilt and I believe I kept the notes with the templates, so if you have any questions, just send me a PM and I'll help all I can. Good luck!

laurlync

This made me laugh because I use the exact phrase about other quilters all the time. As far as tips, all I have to offer is:

1. Draw feathers a lot. A large white board or sketch pad is great because you can draw them to scale and can go longer before running out of room.
2. Pick a few quilt tops or load some practice pieces and practice quilting them. I finally came to the conclusion that the only way I would ever get proficient at quilting feathers was to start putting them on my quilts. I made a few simple quilts just to practice on. I can still use the quilts even if the feathers aren't pretty.
3. I ordered Kimmy Bruner's Twirly Whirly Feathers video to learn the border feather design. The video is great. There are two disks and she starts with the basics. Well worth the cost.
4. Don't stress over every little feather. There were a lot of feathers I wasn't happy with in this quilt, but if you put enough on the quilt, the viewer sees the overall effect, not the individual feathers.
5. Just have fun! Feathers are fun to quilt and if they aren't, go back to 4 above.

Good luck!