Borders and Feathers

You may remember that this year I have been taking part in SewCalGal's Free Motion Quilting Challenge. This has been a great challenge as each month we've had new tutorials and ideas to try - a real wealth of information. Part of the challenge requirement was to complete the tutorial each month and add it to the linky list for that month. A great motivation for completing the challenges is that you then go into the draw for some great prizes!!
December's challenge was by Patsy Thompson and she looked at border treatments. Her tutorial is here.
I totally loved this and had fun practising and adding the ideas to my (fmq) sampler quilt. My sampler quilt had a blank rectangular block so initially I had a play in that. These ideas were for using in narrow borders and sashing strips. We learnt about having variety in a series of border strips to add interest.

The feathers were for another border outside the teardrop style one, but as I had run out of space, I decided they would look fine in the centre of the block.

Then Patsy shared a video on one way she does big feather borders.

We started by marking the spine as we normally would
for free motion feathers, but only to the mid-way point.

 Each half of the border is a 'mirror' image of the other. Well actually, its just where the two halves of a border meet that they are mirror images; the rest of the feather is a free for all (so to speak!)(he he).

I made a little plastic template so it worked where the two
 halves of a border met... 

...but eye-balled the corner ones.

  We just marked the spine, no pre-sewing! Also, both sides of the feather were sewn at once (not up one side, down the other as I usually do them).  Scary but it still worked out!! 

I couldn't get these feathers to go all the way to the edges, it looked awful when I tried. I must admit it took me an age to do the first section - the quick unpic was my friend that morning. I also had some directional issues (ie feathers in all directions!) but once I freed my brain they flowed nicely.

So once again, a special thank you to SewCalGal for hosting this challenge. And a big thank you to Patsy Thompson for sharing this month's tutorial.