Filling around the feathers

Ooops! I realise now that I should have designed the feathers to fill the whole space between the feathered borders. Initially I only intended them to be two corder units, but they grew more than I'm anticipated, and now fill the two sides. I am NOT going to unpick them, so the question is - what do I do in the spaces around them? Whatever I do, it'll be in matching cream BottomLine thread, so it's nto too obvious, and I'll start by echoing the feathers to help emphasise them. So... McTavishing, a small stipple, more of what I did around the tree, repeated echoing???

As an aside, I did the piano key border today, using a ruler. I don't know if there's a trick I'm missing to using rulers to quilt on a domestic sewing machine - certainly a thicker ruler would have helped, but I only had my rotary cutting rulers to hand. I put a strip of double-sided tape on the back of mine, to help keep it in position. I only had to replace it about 5 times as I worked my way around the quilt, and it was definitely worth it. I was tickled-pink that when I got back to my starting point, the line spacing was perfect - no fudging required!

Here's a closer look at the quilting around the tree. I didn't want to McTavish it, as I've done previously on my tree quilts, and have been doodling with combining echoed feathers, paisleys and swirls, and just love this pattern; I'll definitely be using it again. This was the first bit I did; the later parts are neater, and I'll show them properly later. It has the same lovely movement as McTavishing, but is a bit more fun - and I find it easier to quilt, because it's easier to decide where to go next.