Feathers, not quite a Fail.

I've had a lot of time to think about the feathers, but not a lot of time to practice them. Excuses:Machine was in the shop for a week getting pamperedI was away (had to go to Key West)I had companyShort monthI was intimidated
That last one is a big one for me. I have just a little story. Many years ago, visiting a friend of mine who is a fabulous quilter, I asked her what this sewing on her quilt was. She said it's stippling, it's easy and fun, and she sewed some for me, yep, easy and fun.
Jump ahead about two years and I'm still not even thinking about quilting, but making pictures out of fabric sounds good to me. I had a book of Patrick Lose applique, so I made this:

Please excuse the wrinkles and dirt, it's been a box with other craft things for years. Anyway, after I outlined all of the applique, I decided to stipple it, easy and fun. Even now looking at it, I think I did a pretty good job for a first time effort and only going on my friends two minute lesson. I even did swirls on the stork.

Now jump ahead a lot of years and on to feathers. I've done a lot of free motion and just approached them with the same easy and fun mind set, but feathers is a whole new ball game. I tried to just do them

Ridiculous, and I walked away to get on with all of those other excuses. Times running out, so today I revisited them. Taking a more careful approach, here's what I did.

Better, but I need a lot of practice and I need to make them my own, so they flow. Diane's instructions were so very clear and in depth, I could hear the words in my head while I sewed shapes that looked like bad toes. It is true, practice works. In the few I sewed I could see improvement, so I will stick with it, but I don't think you'll be seeing feathers in any of my quilts anytime soon.
Thank you to SewCalGal for this challenge and a huge Thank You to Diane Gaudynski for taking the time to make this tutorial, I think you're amazing.
Thanks for stopping by,Dana