Combining quilting motifs

I've been hard at work on the Tree project, and it's nice to see some progress with the quilting!  Here's what I got done this morning.  I took pictures after each step, so you can see it "growing"!  I started with some yellow paisley in this background section between two branches.

Then, I added a feather in metallic thread.

I echoed the feather with darker blue cotton thread, then added a second feather, up by the paisley.  It's kind of hard to see in this picture.

Here's a closeup of the echo quilting around the fans.

My goal is for different motifs to flow easily together.  Rather than plan what to stitch in each area of the quilt at the beginning, I sew for awhile, and then when I run out of bobbin thread, (or get bored!) I switch to a different color or different motif.  So far, I'm happy with how it's coming out.

I've been working on this project for over a year now, and I hope to have it done in time to enter in the NQA show. I have to buckle down to get it done in time, so there isn't much else to write about here- just more pictures of the same thing.  Hopefully this is still interesting to read- writing about it helps me stay motivated, so thanks for looking!

I'm linking up to Leah Day's Free Motion Friday, and Nina-Marie's Off the Wall Fridays.  Check out these great blogs for plenty of inspiration to start your weekend.

Ode to my seam ripper

This trusty little friend has been working hard for me.

As I've quilted my Tree quilt, I've gotten wrinkles on the back, mainly near the stitch-in-the-ditch quilting.  I fixed one area so far, by taking out the stitches, flipping it over, and quilting from the back so that I can hold the excess fabric taut.  It worked pretty well, with the wrinkle nearly gone and the stitch quality on the front still pretty good.
Here's the back, and the front for comparison.

Once this section was fixed, I kept quilting, and pretty soon I had 2 more wrinkles to fix.

More fun for my trusty seam ripper! She can't wait to get to work. See her peeking out from the pocket of my quilting apron?

Despite these setbacks, I am still making progress and having fun with this quilting!  Here's an overall shot of the back.

And here's a close-up of the Swirling Water design from the front.