Machine Quilt Living Feathers – #454

It’s Free Motion Friday and time to learn a new feather design called Living Feathers!

This beautiful quilting design combines feathers and leaf shapes to create a rich texture for your quilts. It is a bit slow because there are a lot of steps that go into every leaf shape. What this video to see what I mean!

I originally created this design in 2011 when machine quilting the background of Emergence, one of my favorite goddess quilts. As you can see, this is a perfect background quilting design and I love the bright green texture it added to this area.

Emergence Goddess Quilt from a distance:
http://leahday.com/pages/emergence
 Living Feathers Quilting Design close up:

http://leahday.com/pages/emergence

This was quilted on a very tiny scale with YLI Variations thread, one of the only variegated threads I like to use because the color changes are so subtle. This was perfect for making a earthy, forest filled background, the perfect texture for a goddess quilt representing transformation and new life!

Yes, you can definitely machine quilt Living Feathers on a bigger, bed quilting scale. Just start with a much bigger leaf shape so you can fill the space with large, plump feathers, and expand each element with rows of echo quilting.

Do you have a friend that would love learning how to quilt this design? Please share this post so everyone can learn how to free motion quilt Living Feathers!

Let’s go quilt,

Leah Day

LeahDay

Leah Day has been teaching online since 2009. She's the creator of the Free Motion Quilting Project, a blog filled with thousands of quilting tutorial videos. Leah has written several books including 365 Free Motion Quilting Designs, Explore Walking Foot Quilting with Leah Day, and Mally the Maker and the Queen in the Quilt.

1 Response

  1. Robbie says:

    very cool! thanks!!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *