We are designing with machines which can quilt the life out of a quilt top or make it more beautiful. Gaudinski and Hargraves have done stunningly beautiful machine quilting which enhance bedding as well as art.
I think that most people in this posting have remarked on heavy quilting rather than the feather pattern in particular. What technical choices can we make in quilting which increase the enhancement?
I saw a couple posts about choice of batting and threads. How about more thought on how to choose an appropriate design? We can't just stop this discussion at 'personal choice'. There must be some design principle informing the choices. When an LAQ posts a completed quilt it is always interesting to learn what choices were made and why. Maybe someone can round this up into a sensible guidepost.
My own thought is that when you have to fill a border, feathers are probably an easy way to fill in all the space as you cruise down the fabric lane, resulting in a soft and gentle looking pattern which conforms to the border shape so defines it. Same for filling triangles. Since I never filled anything with a curved shape in my quilting life I have no clue and that is a wild guess. What do you quilting pros think?