Well off to a rousing start for 2014!  I have sent off my January and February #NGAQB blocks to their new homes.  I made an excellent Exploding Star from Lisa’s superb pattern (which was trending number two in Craftsy!), and I made got started on the #LuckystarsBOM (I will post on that separately soon I promise).

I finally got started on my Feathers Quilt Along!  I caught this on Instagram and loved the pattern and thought this would be a great new adventure.  So courtesy of Nydia at http://www.add-crafter.com/ and of course http://alisonglass.com/ I am Feathering along!

I decided to use fabrics from Alison Glass lines that I have available as well as some peppered cottons and a couple of items from Julia Horner’s recent line.  I was originally going to use a black background that turned out to have a very uncooperative directional fabric!  I switched gears to a basket weave black.

The pattern is paper piecing, which I have always loved but got away from over the years.  I have found myself going back to it a lot lately!  The instructions in the pattern are well written and easy to follow and of course Nydia’s blog has helpful tips, tricks and guidance!

Here’s my fabric haul for the project, pre cutting!  And speaking of cutting – I was going to follow the cutting instructions in the pattern and have at it, but I kept overthinking color placement and got stalled!  So I cut out all the pattern pieces instead, put them up on my design wall, and am now just doing an eclectic mix of color combinations as I go.  So far, I’ve gotten two columns done and am absolutely loving the colors and layout.  I will update this post as I make more progress!

So it is January 7th and I have made some great progress on this piece!  All the columns are complete and I am doing a happy dance.  I could not be happier with the results.  The pattern is great – well written, easy to follow, and goes together pretty quickly once you get the pace going!  I have to sew the sashings on and then I will have a completed quilt top.  Then onto the debate of how to quilt it.

And I decided that I wanted this professionally quilted, so it went off to my favorite long armer Sue Kappes – you can see her work here:  http://kappeskreations.com/.  She has done several quilts for me and I love working with her and letting her get creative on my stuff.  And she got creative!  I’ve posted pictures of the final piece so you can see the stellar finish!