I found this feather while waiting for my drawing lesson. I don’t know what kind of bird it belongs to, maybe a pigeon.
Feather on the Ground
Reply
Tag Archives: Feathers
Feathers in Thread
Here are two feathers I sewed. No pattern, just free-motion quilting. I lightly penciled in an outline before I started, but that’s all.
Metallic thread is finicky. A lot of sewists have trouble with it breaking easily and often. That certainly had been my experience and I hadn’t tried to sew with it in years. I heard a rumor recently that the quality of metallic thread had greatly improved, so I bought three new spools.
My tested the gold metallic thread and sewed the first feather. The thread did not break! Yippee!
Next I sewed another feather using 30-weight polyester thread (three colors). I liked it, too.
The black markings are done with a special pen whose ink disappears when heat is applied. I took the feathers to my ironing board, covered them with a layer of fabric, and gently pressed them.
Yes, the black markings disappeared, as advertised. But the stabilizer on the back shrunk up a bit and I came away with two feathers free of markings but way more rippled than when I started. Sure hope I remember that the next time I try to remove markings.
Feather Sketch
I sketched this on my own. No YouTube video this time for guidance. I find feathers particularly hard, but I tried one anyway.
This might be a hawk feather.
I think this is “good” on two levels: (1) I took the time to sketch it and (2) it shows progress. But I wouldn’t call it a good sketch of the feather. There is still lots of room for improvement.
Feather, Sketch 051
I’m much happier with this feather sketch than with others I made some time ago. The proportions are still off, (I didn’t leave enough room for the bottom portion of the quill), but getting better.
Getting close
I found this feather earlier in the week while hiking the Canyonlands Trail in Lakeway, Texas. My guess is that it belonged to a vulture (black or turkey vulture?). All the trails have signs about not removing any wood, rocks or any kind of artifacts, but I thought that as this fell from the sky and didn’t originate on the trail, I would claim it.
Vulture feather
It's a long story ... 