Feathers

The Sunbonnet Sue quilt has setting triangles along the outside. I decided to use a feather design to border the blocks. Here's the first one I did the other morning. I've since quilted more than half the feathers. Shown from the right side, you can see the blue washable marker I used to trace the design onto the quilt top.

A view of the back of the quilt:

Antique feather templates used for hand quilting are often adapted to machine quilting by creating a gap between the feathers so they can be quilted continuously. This can be achieved by quilting down one side of the marked line and back up the other side. The other option is to quilt it as the template dictates, but be prepared to re-stitch the top of every other feather so you can make the design continuous.  This re-stitching technique works best for this design and is very good practice for accuracy. A light thread on a light fabric is very forgiving as well.

Copyright ©2011, Sharon Baggs