Monday, March 31, 2014

KISMIF 11--Sorry about the break!

Modern Tradition Quilts

Whoa, sorry about the 6-week break from blogging.  I had mononucleosis and it was all I could do to keep up with my machine quilting orders and my family.  Sometimes, you just get sick.  However, stay tuned because I also have another quilt being published in Issue 17 of Fat Quarterly magazine and another Moda Bakeshop feature coming soon!  Yay!

At any rate, I was showing different feather threadpaths for machine quilters.  There were two ideas left that I wanted to share.

Bump-back feathers.  But why do them when we can do longarm feathers (as taught in previous posts)?  They are more traditional and mimic the antique hand-quilted look.  In antique feathers, there are no separation between the plumes of the feather--which commonly occurs in longarm feathers.

These feathers are an advanced skill as they require back-tracking, or going twice over the same spot twice.  With care and practice, this is doable.







Stitch regulators help with the "bump-back" part of these feathers.  However, I do not have a stitch regulator, so...Is there a way to do the traditional feathers without back-tracking?  

Yes!  It's an awesome "secret".  Instead of tracing back over the plume, go and and so some of your back-ground filler and then come back.  I admit this next diagram looks messy, but you'll get the idea.  For simplicity, the back-ground filler is basic stippling but this trick works with any filler, loop the loops and etc.

  I hope you like this post.  Please feel free to join this week's linky party--open all week and share anything in the home-arts that you've been working on.  Until next week, Happy Quilting!