WoooHooo! I won ribbons at the local quilt show!
#169
Beautiful quilt! I'm so excited because I own this book.
Question...Did you actually use the templates for the flying geese in the book, or did you make them them using a non-template method? If you made them without the templates, what is the FINISHED size of the flying geese? Also, that template for the odd corner...did you use that, or do you have another method to share?
I really don't like using templates for quilts and am thinking there has gotta be a better way to construct this quilt.
Thanks!
Suzanne
Question...Did you actually use the templates for the flying geese in the book, or did you make them them using a non-template method? If you made them without the templates, what is the FINISHED size of the flying geese? Also, that template for the odd corner...did you use that, or do you have another method to share?
I really don't like using templates for quilts and am thinking there has gotta be a better way to construct this quilt.
Thanks!
Suzanne
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!
#170
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!
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