Jaime's Feather Quilt

--jaime

I fell in love with this quilt when I first saw it debuted by Anna Maria Horner at Quilt Market in Spring of 2012. In August of 2012 we had the amazing opportunity to host Ms. Horner here at Fancy Tiger Crafts for some workshops, of course, we asked her if she could teach the feather quilt. She was thrilled and all my dreams came true when I took her class for the amazing feather block that she designed. I only made one block in class, but it was the start of a new quilt that I was very excited about.

If you read the blog, you know I sew a lot of garments and quilts are fewer and farther between. I love using quilts on my bed so I almost exclusively make queen-sized quilts which take some time. In this case, a year and a half, but it was oh-so worth it.

This quilt is almost all from Anna Maria Horner's Field Study collection which had just come out when Ms. Horner visited us in Denver. I used Kona Cotton in Ash for the background color. The quilt took me so long that I ended up cutting Ash from three different bolts over the course of a year and you can see the different dye lots in the quilt. I don't mind, though, I think it adds some movement and character (but lesson learned: fabrics have dye lots, too!).

Each feather block is made up of 9 pieces of fabric. The "feather" pieces are cut from strip-pieced yardage, which actually went quite fast to make up. This is the most intense piecing I have ever done. I ended up developing an assembly line system which made it go faster and I used some downtime over the holidays to really dig in and finish it.

As with all my queen sized quilts, I sent this one off to be quilted. I used our local quilter, Jason Spicknall of Secret Stash Quilting. He did such an amazing job on this quilt and I love it. His simple ruler lines reflect the feathers in a way that compliments the design and does not detract from the feathers themselves. Perfect.

For the back and binding I used fabric from Anna's current collection, Dowry. I love love love the back of this quilt. The print is so amazing, I didn't do any additional piecing on the back. We have the full line of Dowry in stock now, if you're inspired to make your own feather quilt. This Feather Bed Quilt pattern is available for free here.

I love this quilt and am really proud of my accomplishment!