A little more done, but it takes time.

I thought I'd try to do things the Patsy Thompson way rather than the normal faux trapunto. With this method instead of using invisible thread round the outside of each motif and then cutting away, you just quilt each motif in the final thread, then cut away the excess batting.

Cutting away is hard on the hands and takes ages to do it carefully. As this trapunto work will be heavily quilted close to the feathers I didn't have to be too exact, but you still have to be careful not to cut the top fabric. (I did this on my first two faux trapunto quilts, it is recoverable but makes you feel sick to your stomache).

I did this little sample first, mainly to see which background to use. In the sample I stitched one echo row outside the feather and cut round that. I thought that didn't give a clean enough line to the motif so in the quilt itself, I shall stitch this echo line later.

As you can see, when it's finished you can only see the outline of the feather on the back. As I like my quilts to look as good on the back as the front, I probably won't use this method again (but never say never). Another problem is the areas can be quite large in these feathers to have no quilting on them so I shall prabably restitch their spines to secure more fully to the main batting and the backing fabric.