Feathers, Mozart, FMQ, Refinishing Antiques

Can you believe it is February? With the new month rolling in brings new monthly BOM Challenges. I am so excited about learning how to make Feather Plumes as taught by one of my favorite free motion quilting pros, Diane Gaudynski. First I want to say I am still in practice mode and this will not be my official posting for the SewCalGal's Free Motion Quilting post.

Diane offers lots of great advice. The biggest challenges for me is to remember to look ahead, not at my stitching, hopping foot or the needle, but "to look ahead!, be patient, keep my shoulders down and be methodical. I want to be Speedy Gonzalez because I am always thinking about the list of things to accomplish. "Chill I tell myself!"

This is where Mozart and refinishing furniture comes in. Many years ago I refinished a gate leg table that has many wood turning legs. It was quite tedious to strip the finish from them with all the many shapes and crevices. The only way I was able to have enough patience to strip finish and then add 7 coats of finish was to have Mozart playing in the background!

Patience is needed while free motion quilting the feather plumes, so once again I popped my Mozart cd in the player and proceeded with my first practice piece.

If you look at Diane's plumes the feathers start out being small and gradually get larger and then again the feathers grow smaller. I haven't quite achieved it. It did help to keep drawing with pad and pencil to get in to my head to go West. If you look closely I have arrows in my drawing. Though my plumes do not have the size gradations I do have down the moving directions.

Here is the infamous gate leg table that I refinished many years ago. The one that helped me to slow down and enjoy the process. I didn't elaborate what the benefit of listening to Mozart is, which is the pace of the music slows me down and helps my mind to focus on where it needs to be. So now back to practicing making feather plumes. Wishing you all a blessed day!