I hope you were able to join us for our March 2020 meeting of the Quilted Joy Clubhouse. Can you believe we've officially been doing these live meetings for a year now? We've had so much fun during these meetings, and I want to thank you for joining us live and watching the replays. These videos aren't possible without your support! If you missed this month's livestream it’s available to watch (or re-watch) whenever you’d like. Find it on the Quilted Joy Youtube channel!

Our main program for this month’s meeting was about the four types of quilted feather spines. Watch the video below to see how to quilt feather spines!

Four Types of Quilted Feather Spines

The spine is the line your feather plumes radiate off from. The spine you choose can change the overall look of your feathers. The four spines are:

1. Single Spine
2. Double Spine
3. Wide Spine
4. Spineless

Of these four spines, I'd say we see the single spine most often. It's how we create our traditional feathers and it's typically the spine you first learn feathers on. The double and wide spines allow your feathers to be a little beefier. And with wider spines, you can add extra decoration like ribbon candy, pearls, refrigerator coils, and more! I think my favorite might be the spineless feathers. You might have also heard these called longarm feathers. To quilt spineless feathers, you'll chalk your feather's path and then stitch both sides of the feathers, alternating every other side. The spineless feathers allow for the least amount of thread buildup and I love that there's not as much backtracking.

Angela’s Favorite Things

If this month’s program has you excited for feathers, then you’ll love my favorite things too! First I wanted to share the ProSpine Rulers with you. These were designed by Lisa Calle of Quilter’s Groove and they’re perfect for marking your spines. There are three different size: small, medium, and large. They’re just the right sizes to add feathers to your borders or negative space in your quilt.

The Fast and the Fancy is a fabulous book by Bethanne Nemesh. This book is overflowing with feather inspirations! She begins the book with some background on how to quilt feathers – including the feather’s spine. She then shares lots of different types of feather plumes. And if that wasn’t enough, she shows variations for those feathers with fast and simple versions to fancy and complicated. This book is one of my all time favorites!

Sandy’s Bright Basement Studio

For our looky-loo tour we peeked into Sandy Dallmann’s beautiful studio. I visited her studio recently to install her new IntelliQuilter and was blown away by her studio. She’s set up in a walkout basement where she runs her longarm quilting business called Pumpkin Creek Quilts. I love how bright and airy her space is. And I’m very jealous of her fabric display! And her batting storage idea was brilliant! Batting storage is something I personally struggle with, and I love the bases her husband built for her. Sandy, thank you for letting us peek into your studio!

How Would You Quilt It? Brenda’s Poppy Field Panel Quilt

Brenda shared this poppy field panel quilt in the Quilted Joy Clubhouse Facebook group looking for suggestions of how to quilt it. I used to call panels cheaters, but not anymore! These quilts are the perfect canvas for trying new skills without the pressure of quilting a quilt you’ve spent hours and hours putting together.

To quilt the panel, I want to accentuate the images. I’ll trace around the flowers and the leaves and give them a little more texture. This is a great opportunity to get to know your machine and how it moves. It also allows you to practice your echoing skills. As we get further into the poppy field, the poppies begin to blend together. In that space I’ll just quilt a dense meander. In the sky I’ll follow the movement of the clouds with a wide open flattened meander.

In the green border, I thought a chevron design would look nice. This gives you an opportunity to practice with a straight edge ruler for a simple and effective design. Finally, in the purple border I added my Fried Egg Filler. You can watch how to quilt this design here. I thought this design would loosely tie back to the poppies while easily filling in the space. Thanks for sharing Brenda! We can’t wait to see how you decide to quilt it.

The Quilted Joy Clubhouse Live Meetings occur on the first Wednesday of every month at 1pm Eastern. Our next Clubhouse meeting will be April 1, 2020 at 1pm Eastern/Noon Central. If you’d like to watch live, you can find us on Facebook in the Quilted Joy Clubhouse or subscribe to the Quilted Joy Youtube channel to be notified about our videos. Don’t worry if you can’t join us live. The videos will remain available on both Facebook and YouTube afterwards so you can watch them whenever you want!

Hope to “see” you at the next live meeting!