Saturday, March 15, 2025

Reclaiming Fallen Feathers

Hi and welcome! Today is a special post for Project Quilting (PQ) 16.5, "Follow Your Arrow". This little FMQ (free motion quilted) piece recalls Icarus' flight.

Note: It would seem that I'm still having problems with dates and time 😒- the PQ 16.5 closed last week! So please enjoy this post. I did link up to the Project Quilting Facebook page. 

Reclaiming Fallen Feathers


The PQ challenge theme was "Follow Your Arrow" and the Table Scraps Challenge colour for March is yellow. My thought process: arrow → feathers → bird → Icarus

Reclaiming Fallen Feathers

On a very bright piece of yellow hand-dyed fabric, I used a FriXion pen to draw the bird and the fallen feathers. Then I thought of Icarus and drew in the sun. Finally I added the arrow. 

Reclaiming Fallen Feathers on my outdoor carpet

I took out the black thread and free motion embroidered the bird, filling in the area with black. Then came the feathers. I FMQ tiny feathers in the shape. I did the same with the arrow.

Switching thread, I used a lovely variegated orange to pink King Tut thread for the sun. Yellow wouldn't have shown up!

Another view of Reclaiming Fallen Feathers

It was then time to finish it off. I repurposed a scrap strip of blue backing and batting left over from my blue scrappy quilt and used the pillowcase method. Once turned right-side out, I stitched the edge with a very light yellow thread and to FMQ around the embroidered sections. I added some vertical waves to highlight the falling feathers and then an arrow head pattern to give the arrow mouvement.

What I learned
  • I wanted this piece to be as easy as possible. I had all kinds of complicated ideas and gave them a firm pass! Yay for me 😃
  • I found the yellow fabric, checked out pictures of flying birds and discarded most of them as too difficult for me to FMQ. I then settled on the image of a flying gull, something that even I can draw!
  • This was probably one of the fastest pieces that I made, mostly following my intuition. Thanks intuition! 😍
  • Once I started the piece, I was done in a couple of hours. Wow!
  • I must admit that after I finished drawing the piece, I went on Wikipedia to make sure that I had the story straight. I'm happy to say that I remembered correctly (well at least one version of it!)
  • It's funny how I usually start with complicated ideas that I often (but not often enough!) simplify.
Related links
Linking parties
I'll be linking up this post to many fun linking parties, including Project Quilting Facebook page, Free Motion Mavericks and the March Table Scraps Challenge when it opens. You may want to check some of these out! Put your foot downOff The Wall FridayFinished (Or Not) FridayBeauties Pageant, TGIFF, Patchwork & Quilts,

Project details

Reclaiming Fallen Feathers
created for Project Quilting 16.5, Follow your arrow
Size: 6½" x 5½"
Material: hand-dyed fabric, thread
Techniques: free motion embroidery and free motion quilting






3 comments:

  1. Bravo pour cette idée originale, et la réalisation rapide ! Merci pour le partage ! Bises

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  2. Simple, but effective design. Sorry you missed the deadline for posting it, you did well on following the prompt.

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  3. What a good plan! Kudos for completing the prompt!--TerryK@OnGoingProjects

    ReplyDelete

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