I recently posted in the picture section about my former fear of feathers. Free Motion Feathers to be more specific. These things terrified me ! I have taken numerous classes, watched a million and one videos and still, just could NOT make feathers that looked anything remotely like what the teacher was telling me they should be looking like !
I had finally just chalked it up to the fact that I was just not going to be a feather quilter. I was okay with that for a while. I am aware there are things that are just beyond my abilities, and I just focus on those things that I do well.
Then I started working on my Hole in the Wall quilt, and I WANTED feathers on it. I knew it would look awesome with some feathers. The trouble was, I SUCKED at feathers ! One night out of pure frustration, I sat down with my big white board ( see post Quilting Plans ) and tried to sketch out my idea. Let me tell you, I was about in total shock, because there before me, on my table, were feathers ! Now I could not draw feathers any better than I could FMQ them before, and yet there they were. Feathers that LOOKED like feathers. They were not perfect feathers, but they sure did look like feathers !
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So I grabbed my blocks and went to the machine, and sure enough, feathers appeared, this time in thread ! They still may not be perfect, but they sure do look nice. They are MY feathers.
As I sat there at my machine, I was trying to figure out how all of a sudden feathers just ” clicked ” in my brain, and made my hands move in the right way to form them. It was then that I realized something that nearly blew me away.
I was thinking INSIDE the block !
How many times have you sat down at your machine with a practice sandwich that looked similar to this ?
Nice big empty slate right ? Lots of room to practice and try things out ? That was me too. I always have practice sandwiches ready to go so when the mood hits me to play around, I can just grab one and go at it. This is also I think the greatest downfall of my learning !
When we teach our children to write their names, do we just sit them in front of a big blank piece of paper and hand them a marker ? No, we give them something that usually resembles this.
Yep, that’s right. We give them BOUNDARIES ! We teach them how to make the shapes ( letters ) INSIDE the box ( lines ) !
Well by George ! Why don’t we do that with quilting ? !
Instead of sitting down with a big empty space. Try sketching out some guidelines to work with. It could be smaller squares, or you could sketch out an entire quilt block to work with.
By giving yourself boundaries, you can better grasp how large of a scale you need to make things, or how far over your feathers need to go, or how your going to work yourself out of a corner.
So if you are having trouble getting your free motion to look ” right ” try giving yourself some boundaries, and think INSIDE the block, and not out into empty space !
PS. I make all of my practice sandwiches with left over batting and cut up sheets from the thrift store / tag sales. They are super cheap, and come in solids !