Comfy Cozy

Remember my Feather Bed Quilt?

I worked on it here and there over the summer, a feather at a time.  Last week I started looking at it again, thinking, "I really should get back to that."  And since the last few days were cold and rainy here, all I wanted to do was things that make me feel warm and cozy:  knitting and quilting.

I had half the feathers done, and decided that things would go faster if, rather than doing each feather individually, I did the remaining feathers assembly-line style:

So Wednesday evening, I attached all the B pieces to the A pieces.  Yesterday morning I was back at it.  It didn't take me long to sew the A/B units to the C piece (the stem), so I went ahead with D.

And once I had D on, I felt like I might as well go ahead and attach E.  And since that didn't take long either, I went ahead with piece F - which finishes out the block!

Well, of course, having all my feathers put together, there was no way I could resist arranging them on the floor to see what my finished top would look like:

And once they were down there in an arrangement I liked, I figured I might as well just go ahead and sew them together so I didn't have to worry about keeping them in that order.  So, although I didn't mean to do it, I spent ALL day yesterday working on it, and finished the top!  Here it is with the first few rays of sunshine this morning:

When I started this project, I planned to make the twin size from the pattern, which requires 38 feathers.  But each feather is surprisingly large, and I realized that 38 feathers would produce a much larger quilt than what I wanted.  So I scaled my pattern back to 22 feathers.  As it is, this top almost completely covers the top of my queen-sized guest bed, at 54" x 71":

My background fabric is Essex Linen, which I'd never used before this project.  It is a lot heavier than I realized, so for the back I'm going to use voile - another print from this line, Anna Maria Horner's Field Study Coordinates in Saffron.  I've been thinking about how best to quilt it so as not to interfere with the design, and I'm thinking it's going to be hand-quilted.

So while last week I was wondering if I would get this quilt done before the end of the year, now it's looking like I will.  I'm very excited about that, and am already planning out the next quilting project . . .