Finished All the Borders, Now for the Freehand Feathers

Started marking the stencil for the final border. Again, since Josephine isn't washing the quilt, I had to be a little more creative with the marking.


I like the Quilt Pounce marking pad from Hancy Mfg. I use the white powder that irons off, not the wash out one. The powder that irons off seems to last a lot longer while quilting instead of rubbing off on my clothes.


The design quilted up really nicely and fits the border perfectly. Now on to the two 2" wide red strips at the top and bottom of the quilt.


These two red borders are only on the top and bottom of the quilt and don't go all the way around. I chose to treat them as one 4" wide unit rather than as two separate strips. This stencil is from The Stencil Company (www.quiltingstencils.com) and is HOL-486-03.




I like the geometry of the squares because everything else on the quilt is curvy. Going for balance here.....used the same red Mettler threads as in the straight stitching in the red stripes.


Love the way this looks. You can see the chalk marks on the fabric where I used the Pounce Pad, but I found that it rubs off pretty easily with the side of a Batt Scooter, so I keep an extra in my work room.




Today I'm going to stitch freehand feathers in all of the remaining white areas. I'll use Mettler 50 wt. Silk Finish (100% cotton) thread in the top of the machine and the pale yellow thread in the bobbin that I used when I stitched the cables you can see at the top of the photo. I like color #887, which is a soft white rather than a brighter white. I never use what I call "white white" because I love the look of #887 so much.

I'm stitching the feathers freehand rather than using a stencil because the spacing of the stitching areas vary from stripe to stripe. It would be really difficult to find a stencil to fit, so I'm just going for it!

Hopefully I can get all these feathers done today, finish up the blue star tomorrow and get it FedEx'd out to Josephine sometime tomorrow afternoon.

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Location:Palmdale CA