Free Motion Quilting Feathers in 4 ways

[Music] hi there I'm Lauren with bold motion quilting and I want to show you a few different ways to stitch a feather so I am a firm believer and that not all of our brains work the same so we all kind of need different ways for how to stitch something so the first kind of feather that I want to show you is going to be a no backtrack feather so I'm just going to give myself a spine and you can use any kind of marking tool I'm just going to use a chalk ruler and I'm just going to do now if you are new to feathers you want to do just a very gentle slight curve okay if you are advanced then you can make those curves a little more curvaceous if you would like but just starting out do a slight curve or even practice your feathers on a straight line the other tip is always give yourself parameters for where your feathers should be so if you're quilting on an actual quilt sample or quilt top you should have some sashing or whatnot that you're going to work with it so no backtrack feather is like a hook so you're just going to come up and do a general seeker hook it around and come back and touch the line c-curve leave yourself enough space between this line and the line you just need to get out see curb space come up and around now this is a no backtrack feather because you don't need to actually stitch on any lines that you've previously stitched on something that you can do is a nice little cheater method would be to kind of echo coming back down they kind of like an open funky spine and then you come out and then for my last one I do like a teardrop shape and just kind of tack off my threads right there at the top but that's a fun little way to do just a quick feather design and if your threads match with your top it won't look super messy and over time as you do this it'll get neater and neater the other thing that you could do is come in and maybe do a couple wavy lines just to make the middle look dense but this way you don't have to worry about practicing backtracking to make your feathers pop then next we're going to do a traditional feather okay a traditional feather utilizes an ear type shape so you're just gonna do the same motion over and over and over these kind of feathers are really great for sit-down quilters because sit-down quilters have a small area that they can quote within so you can get a lot of feathers in a long run with these traditional style feathers doesn't mean you can't do them on a long arm I'm about to show you how to do them on a long arm but they are great for sit-down quilters so we're going to come up and I like to think of kind of half of a heart and touch and you go right on that top line that you stitch backtrack and touch us trying inside this fine so you backtrack up scoop up and out now I tried very hard not to backtrack too much down here because if I keep putting layers of thread in here this is going to get really wide and really fat and just full of thread so as soon as I can touch a previously stitch line I stop and go back up just to close off that feather so I stopped right here where I could touch it the good thing about this feather and I kind of progressed in from the hook to the traditional to the bump back it's just it's getting you that muscle memory so it's the same motion over and over and over now if you want you can stitch a line right down here through the middle but backtracking takes a lot of practice so you're either gonna want to go really slow or really fast but it only takes a second for those lines to go straight through those pretty little teardrop tips you got in there and ruin the feathers that you just made so your other option I'll show you after stitching this side is another way you could come down so you're half a heart backtrack and stitch up and over and down and touch so if you need to cheat her way to backtrack back down to stitch one side or the other you just come up and echo and use the side of your hopping foot to go around all of those feathers that'll give you a nice clean consistent echo and then you end up at the bottom and you can do your other side of your feathers but just to keep it the same we're just gonna echo it so you can see what it would look like at the top when it's finished as well and especially if your thread matches no one's gonna notice this extra little line right in here where you snuck out to do that echo and snuck out to do this I go it all just kind of works and blends together you see that no one's gonna notice that it's barely even there so now I want to show you what's called a bunk back feather for a bump back feather I like to have some pretty deep curves okay and so that's why I say that this one is a little more advanced than the other ones because you need to be able to get in and out of those curves if you're not good at getting in and out of the curves your feathers can get a little wonky or they can get very long trying to compensate for the space in here of the curve but I want to show you a little trick and you can use this trick in the traditional and in the no backtrack but once you try these two without the trick and then try this one with the trick you'll be like oh my gosh where was that my whole life get a line from the apex of your curve out to your sashing and the apex of your curve out to your stashing and so that line has made such a big difference for me so I'm going to start my feathers I'm going to do bump back so my first bump back we're just going to start with a regular feather and the bump back feathers are called bump back because you come up and over and touch bump back along the outside pull it out and around thumb up and touch bump back come up around and down this one takes a little bit of trying to come up and touch bump back and I like these feathers because they reach it would be a lot harder to pull a feather out into a corner than it is to just swoop it up in that corner and come back okay so now what I like to do if as you approach the line you don't pass it you respect it okay so we're breaking that curve in half so let's not pass the line which means I have to bump back a lot okay come up and do my feather come up and do my feather okay so now we are below the line and now that we've completed all the way to the inside of our curve we can go past the line so I'm going to pull it leather around like it's tucking behind my other one come up and touch but back come up and touch back flat come up and touch ok so that's my bump back feather and traditionally I will do some kind of filler or something in here along the outside to get down or I'll follow right in the middle on my spine so I start with my solid one up and touch bump back around and down come up and touch bump back respecting that line as we approach it not worrying about it once where that curve is filled in and we're past it if you've never done feathers like this before I want you to go home give it a try go into your studio start mapping out some feathers and whether you do the know backpack the traditional or the bump back use those lines and see if they help you to get around the curves yeah you can find it just sneak out of there at any time let's see what that looks like I wonder if I can get my camera angle a little more on top see how there's a lot of movement compared to the traditional style on even more so compared to a no backtrack style just gives you like those big fluffy fat moving feathers and then this is kind of more of a traditional old school type feather which is why they call it traditional but this is you can still get all the same movement with these kind of feathers and it's you're basically just moving the needle or the fabric in a different pattern to get them so you can still get all this movement with these traditional feathers you just have to put those registration lines in the curve so that you can respect them and curve along with them another style of feather for the know back track is one that always looks like seaweed to me but this one is one that I would do before I did a traditional feather and that is just so that I can get down the muscle memory without having to worry about any kind of backtracking or touching so I would do that heart shape and when I touch my spine come up around and do the heart shape again now this is a tough one because you need to be able to either bring this one down or echo around to get back down to the other side either is fine I actually don't think I could do it upside down this one always takes me for a loop anyway okay and we're still doing the no back jack touch I was a little too wide of a space [Music] throw one out go little higher unless that one up coming down solo but you get the idea so it's nice to be able to progress from find out the hook shape right into the note backtrack shape and in the traditional shape where you are backtracking over the top and they're touching in size about that so it's a lot of fun there's a lot of progressions that can happen with quilting you start with a simpler shape and move your way into the shape and the better that you get the more you can compress them and get them together and then also be able to kind of stack and create movement and flow I hope you enjoyed this quick little tutorial on some just different ways that you could quote feathers if you're looking to learn more I do have an online website bold motion quilting comm where I have a training catalogue where you can take some free or paid for classes and all kinds of notions for free motion quilting to help you better with your free motion quilting so please visit me the link is in the description below or in the description above this video and it is bold motion quilting comm check out the products for different items that you might need or the class catalogue if you want to continue some learning take care and happy quilting [Music]

Channel: Bold Notion Quilting

Views: 169,042

Rating: 4.937789 out of 5

Keywords: BoldNotionQuilting, freemotion, freemotionquilting, fmq, quilting, howto, doityourself, sewing, freehand, doodlequilting, modernquilting, diy, quilt, quilter, craftproject, homemade, artist, textile, color, geometry, modern, patchwork

Id: -O0GOZ4O86s

Length: 15min 7sec (907 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 28 2018