Ultimate Free-Motion Feathers

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Learn a stunning assortment of free-motion feather motifs, and elevate your quilts to new heights of style!

Feather Basics

Meet expert quilter Patsy Thompson, your guide to creating gorgeous free-motion feather designs that will enhance any style of quilt. Learn how to expertly stitch a feather’s curved teardrop shape as you work on four versatile motifs. In the process, you’ll discover simple tricks for achieving smooth, accurate results every time!

Variations of Plume Proportions & Shapes

Once you’ve mastered the basic feather, play around with the size, shape and placement of the plumes to create whimsical or elegant effects. Practice stitching simple teardrop shapes interspersed with fanciful swirls. Then tackle one-sided and asymmetric feathers for two more eye-catching designs.

Mastering Feather Manipulation

Transforming the look of your feathers can be as simple as changing the shape of their spines. Learn how to use flexible curve rulers to mark a variety of spine guidelines before stitching in the feathers. Plus, discover a trusty technique for fitting feathers into spaces of all shapes and sizes!

Decorating Your Feathers

Add emphasis to your feathers by embellishing the space around them with echo quilting, pebbling or elegant swirls. Patsy demonstrates these techniques, then shares her innovative methods of filling in the spine with lovely designs. Want to make even more impact? Learn how to quilt a secondary motif inside your feathers using decorative thread.

Basic Featherette Work

Enhance your borders, swags and pieced blocks — or fill odd-shaped spaces on your quilt top — with a variety of attractive featherette motifs. Patsy explains what a featherette is before offering step-by-step instruction on stitching these multisized plumes, which emanate from a single point. You’ll also see how to use guidelines to create the appearance of symmetry.

Complex Featherette Work

Build on the skills you learned in Lesson 5 to create cohesive featherette designs that span multiple blocks. Using a simple template, Patsy walks through the steps of constructing two motifs that mirror each other. In addition, find out how to quilt unique feathered patterns, perfect for framing a focal design.

Plume-Based Fill Designs

The versatility of plume motifs makes them perfect for filling the backgrounds of your quilts. With Patsy’s guidance, you’ll see how to stitch groups of plumes, using echo lines to travel between different sets. As a bonus, Patsy shares numerous eye-catching variations that will elevate any of your projects!