Practising and peeking

This afternoon I finished a quilt top (peek to the left). But naturally the shops were shut and I needed backing, so I pieced the batting from my many scraps and turned my attention to practising my FMQ skills and trying out some patterns from the books I've acquired recently.

I've tried following quilting lines once or twice before and failed miserably, so put that technique aside until I had the chance to practise some more. It turns out it's not as hard and I'd made it out to be! I still have a long way to go, but I'm happy enough with my work that I'll be using this design on the quilt as soon as possible:I adapted it to fit the shape, and given the quilt design, I think I'll have to adapt it a lot more for the other spaces I want to quilt. I'll need to find something at the quilt shop I can use to mark the quilting pattern, too.I definitely need to work more on my feathers - at the moment I have very little say as to what direction they go! They look ok in the middle of a blank space, but I know if I wanted to do a certain shaped feather it would ignore my will and go its own sweet way!

And here is a peek at the border I added to Joy's RR centre: