Beautiful Bed Runner continued

 I know, this is not a very creative title, but it works.  Especially since this post is a continuation of yesterday's....I had a few minutes to work on Diane's bed runner while Marley took a nap.
Thank goodness I loaded the quilt last night because it takes patience to load a quilt and I was using mine on Lil Miss Priss.  This is the first 20 minutes of her taking a nap.

Of course, eventually she did crash.  Because she didn't sleep very well last night, her morning nap lasted a good hour and half, so I did get a nice chunk of quilting done.

I started with the circle feathers that I planned to used.  Because I haven't done these in quite some time, I decided to practice on my small white board.  It's a way to increase muscle memory so that it becomes easier to move around the motif without having to think about which way to move. 

I'm definitely not a artist. In fact, you can see that I can not draw.  The idea is to get my muscles to move in the right directions while I'm thinking of what is next instead of what is happening right under the needle.  I've discovered that even thought my practices lines look pretty lame, the same lines are smoother when I "draw" them on with the machine.  

I am very good about looking ahead of the needle and, in fact, I can look ahead of the needle and a bit to either side, which allows me to anticipate how much space I'm trying to fill.  

Eventually I did get to the machine and started on those circle feathers.  The outcome is better than the white board drawing.  Isn't this going to be pretty?

I decided to leave the center of the four-patch square open so that the pretty points will stand out.  After I got a few squares stitched, I began thinking about the sashing strips.  There are a few problems with the borders being a little tight.  I decided to stitch the sashing with a medium stipple since stipples are pretty good about holding a quilt together and also quilt out some issues or problem areas.  

I got farther than I hoped today.  In fact, I got half-way through the quilting.  There are three rows of four-patch blocks and I've dropped feathers into almost two rows, plus I stippled some of the sashing.  Tomorrow I should be able to finish the feathers and and stippling.  Then I'll have only the borders left.  I hope to have the entire bed runner completed by Wednesday afternoon and ready to ship back to Diane on Thursday or Friday.  Of course, much depends on Marley's naps.