Cotton + Steel Feather Mini

Remember my first mini quilt? The one that I made to be given away and then decided to keep? I made its replacement and sent it off to my swap partner last week.

Feathers! I used Anna Maria's pattern to make these, but instead of strip piecing and then cutting the feathers out of the strip sets, I paper pieced these beauties. Easy, peasy. I started with a good pile of fabrics and four copies of the feather template. I added the fabrics one by one to the templates, making sure to maintain the angle of the feather. Once I had done two feather halves, it dawned on me that I would need to sew on the reverse side for the other two. Glad I caught that before I had sewn, although an extra feather wouldn't have been so bad!

After adding the black chambray background pieces and sewing the feathers together, I felt that there was too much negative space in the middle. I ended up cutting out about 1 1/2" total - 3/4" from each side. Jane, acting as an extra set of eyes, agreed that less was more. I quilted it with straight lines about 1/4" apart. I love how it turned out and, thankfully, so did my partner.

On to the next mini quilt! These things are a little addictive.