Feathers Being Born...

This weekend I have the rare opportunity to indulge in some quality sewing time with some of my "peeps"...as my good friends are fondly referred to!  I'm not teaching...I'm not hostessing the weekend...I'm a participant so I can snug in with my baggy denim shirt, fuzzy socks, good music, and sew to my heart's content.  Life is good :)

I brought along my yellow wholecloth as well as three new backgrounds I'm working on.  Yesterday I started getting some of the feather border sewn and wanted to share feathers being born.

When I sketched out the border I drew my spines only as I wanted to do free-form style feathers.  I did make little dotted lines as a guide on either side of the spine to give me something to shoot for to keep my feathers a consistent size. 

I get lots of questions, especially from my Craftsy students, on the over-under style of designing and I thought this would be a great opportunity to show how I do that.  I quilted the feather plumes that are on "top" first.  Then I went back and quilted the ones that are "underneath" second.  It's a little tedious but the results are definitely worth it.

Once both layers of feathers were completed I went back with a matching yellow silk and echoed the overall feather design three times.  I went back again and added little yellow whispies in the center of each feather.  I love doing this as it adds strength to the bottom of the feather and stacks it up a bit at the spine.

I'm also in the middle of rewriting handbooks and the first one I'm working on is my Heirloom Feathers & Backgrounds.  I got this pretty woven one finished up just a bit ago.

Have a wonderful weekend!  I will have more goodies to share first part of next week.  Hugs, Cindy :)