Originally Posted by GGinMcKinney
On home machine do you free motion over the drawn lines of a feather or use walking foot? For beginners. I would imagine one day you would hope to do it FM with no lines drawn.
You can do either, depending on the design you choose.
You need to use the FMQ foot or darning foot for feathers, and do as much marking as you fell need. Just be sure to test removal of your marks on a scrap of material first! (Ask me how I know this!) When you've had enough practice, you may only want to mark the spines of the feathers, or not mark at all.
A really fun design to do that is easy for beginners is to use the walking foot to stitch a grid of gently wavy lines all over the quilt. To kind of guide the lines of stitching, you can either mark with something easily removable, or, my favorite method-use 2 parallel strips of blue painters tape spaced 2-4 inches apart and keep your wavy lines of stitching between them. Then just pull one of the tape strips off, move it over, and repeat stitching until you've worked your way across the whole quilt top. There's no marking or paper to remove, and the tape just peels right off because you do not stitch over it.
It turns out looking really cool, especially with a contrasting but coordinating thread and you can space the stitching lines however is needed for the batting you are using. To make it a little more fancy, you can do double lines of stitching using the edge of the walking foot along the first stitching to guide the second line of stitching. This is a great confidence builder for beginners!
My daugher used this technique on one of the first fairly large quilts she did on her new machine:
http://www.quiltingboard.com/t-134082-1.htm
Wendy