Feather Quilt

This is my sister Cristin. Isn't she beautiful? I adore her & miss her so much. She lives in Boston & some days that feels farther away than others. She called me a few weeks back & asked if I could make her a quilt. What an honor! I asked her what she wanted & she said whatever I decided. So I told her a few ideas I had & decided to go with a feather quilt.

I thought about what my sister might like & I kept thinking of her tattoo. I wanted the quilt to fit her personality. I think it does & I hope she likes it.

 I am sure you have seen a few feather quilts popping up here & there. Susannah made one & when I saw it I knew I had to make one for my sister. Zana had seen the beautiful feather quilt that Anna Maria Horner had made & then came up with her own pattern. Susannah was so helpful when it came to making the actual feathers. I asked her quite a few questions. We did things a little different. She paper pieced hers & I didn't. I learned a lot from making these & I feel like I could possibly even try my hand at making some of the more complicated picture blocks that I have seen on the Internet. I used some scrap fabric from my stash for the feathers & a blue tiny pin dot fabric for the stem of the feather. Maybe I'm silly for loving muslin so much but I love using it for quilts as a filler fabric. I think for this quilt it really allowed the feather blocks to stand out.

Since I wasn't using an actual pattern I put all the feather blocks on the floor where I wanted them & then cut & pieced the muslin fabric together. It was a little tricky but I was so happy with the outcome.

I decided to keep the quilting pretty simple. Straight lines with a little squiggle every 6 inches or so all the way across.

For the back of the quilt I used some awesome vintage fabric that a friend of mine had given me. The apple fabric & blue pin dot fabric (used in the stem of the feathers) are both from Hancock.

The cute poppy fabric that I used as the binding is also from Hancock.

Here's the front finished!

& The Back

This quilt measures 57"x65"

::UPDATE::
Today Anna Maria Horner released her PDF of her Feather Bed Quilt pattern! It's a free pattern & you can find it ::here::