Quilting the Feathered Star

I had to get going on this -- it's going to be in a couple of shows as part of a group exhibit soon and it always takes longer than expected to finish anything.

I've been procrastinating -- hoping it would magically quilt itself.  Not because I don't like quilting -- as much as I like complicated piecing, I like quilting better.  Sometimes.  Because this is going to be a "show quilt" and  is a pretty traditional quilt, there are more "rules."  I don't want the quilt show police coming down on the others in the group for letting me in the show.  Let them get mad at someone else.

I outlined the tigers in the center and did a curved bit around all the star "feathers."


I was going to quilt free-form feathers in all that space around the center star.  So I got into EQ7 and played around with stencils and even printed some out -- but they didn't look right with all the spiky pieced feathers and tiger motifs.

I wound up tracing the space on parchment paper and doing a sort of spiky leaf and vine.  I used chalk to draw the spine of the vine on the quilt so I would have a guide.




I did the quilting much more densely than the drawing -- I was going for a MacTavishy-spiky-viney look.  It was very hard to photograph thin (50 wt) black thread on the black fabric.



Those threads are waiting for me to bury them -- I'm not crazy about doing it, but the quilt will look so much better with those ends buried rather than cut.

Then I went back and did a leafy vine thing in the area around the outer star.  Now I have to figure out what to do with the rest.  The post that shows the whole top is here.  I'm open to suggestions!