No one can resist the Feather Block by Anna Maria Horner. It’s whimsical and sophisticated at the same time. It can be used for dedicated fabric or to go through leftover fabric. It has a lot of pieces….but it’s pretty simple.
I have some free motion quilting to practice, but I wanted to practice on things that I was going to use and not just muslin or scrap batting sandwiches. Dangerous? Yes. So…I compromised and made practice blocks to practice quilt on. It all makes sense in my head.
Mom went to McMinnville, Oregon with her BFF to go to antique shops and quilting shops, etc. I love McMinnville. It may be my favorite town in all of Oregon. How can you not LOVE a town that has a sexy Ben Franklin statue?
Hahahaha. Ew.
Really I do love McMinnville. Mom went to Boersma’s and brought me back a bag of scraps….that doesn’t read nearly as cool as it is…
Big old bag of really high quality scraps. HAHAHA. She’s going to read this….she knows I love it and that I appreciate it!
Anywho, it was a perfect, already matched up stash to try out the feather block. Most of the fabric was already in perfect width strips for strip-piecing together.
Ms. Horner’s site has the link to the PDF pattern with instructions. Isn’t that SO GENEROUS? I went to FedEx/Kinkos and had them print the pattern pages (2) on 80 lb. card stock so that I’d have a sturdy template for my rotary cutter for a whopping $0.43.
It was really easy, by the way…just walk into Kinkos, ask them their email, email the link from your smart phone, and ask them to print the last two pages on card stock (80 lbs is technically cover stock, if I recall, but whatever – ask for 80 lb weight paper). You can email on their website or whatever, but I find it so much easier to just walk in. No toner/printer/paper fuss. I kept the instructions up on my iPad while I was working. Easy.
The instructions are for strips of width of fabric as if you’re cutting strips from a fat quarter or what-have-you, but you can finagle scraps just fine. Sorry about low light photo, whoopsie….but see the lines on the pattern Anna put on? That made it super easy to get the ‘feathers’ lined up so when you piece it, they’re at the same angle to the edge.
So, yeah. I started with a Kona Bone/neutral, and tinkered with a bit of teal. I prefer the teal….but if I was going to do a big scrappy quilt and use up all my mismatched scraps, I’d probably stick to the neutral.
This is so beautiful I am in the process of making my on version. But what size did you make your blocks
Thank you so much! It’s hanging in my dining room now and I still love it. The blocks are about 8 3/4″ x 17 1/2″ but that was after being quilted and trimmed down. I don’t recall what they were before. I think I just followed the AMH instructions. It’s been so long, I’m sorry I’m not much help!