Rhonda Bracey: At Random

After our first quilt retreat in September 2009, coming up with the challenge theme for our retreat in September 2010  fell to Glenys. In January we received a beautifully hand-made card in the mail, telling us about ‘Challenge 28’. Why 28? Well, it’s the addition of 9 (months to complete the challenge) + 9 (using 9 fabrics only) + 9 (using a 9-patch design) +1 (to create one item).

I’m not a big fan of the typical 9-patch design as it can look very repetitive. But I found a variation on the internet — a crazy 9-patch (details of the technique are here: http://allsorts.typepad.com/allsorts/2006/10/crazy_about_qui.html). Back in January, that idea went into my head as a possibility. Where it sat… and waited… and waited…

Until Easter. I had some time over Easter, the weather had cooled down a bit as we headed into autumn, so it was time to investigate the crazy 9-patch to see if I still liked the idea. I did. So it was off to my stash of fabrics! What to do? What to choose? After auditioning several fabric combinations (and eliminating some because I didn’t have enough to cut a 12.5 inch square from it), I chose four fabrics I didn’t like at all (and had wondered what to do with them!), two I wasn’t sure about, and three I quite liked. I made sure I had lights, mediums and darks, then set about cutting out my squares, then cutting through the squares and restitching them together, before cutting them again and restitching them into the crazy blocks (my Mum always wonders why I take perfectly good fabric, cut it into bits, then sew it together again!).

I ended up with nine crazy 9-patch blocks, then sewed sashing strips to them, then sewed them all together to make the quilt top. I added a border, then created a quilt sandwich with the top, batting, and a backing fabric.

Next came the quilting! following the ‘nine’ theme, I used 9 different free motion stitches — one different stitch for each fabric, plus extras for the sashing strips and the outer border.

By the end of the second day it was almost finished! All that was left to do was square up the quilt, add binding and add a label.

Here are photos of the quilt before those final steps — click an image to see it full size:

We’ve now had our quilting retreat and I’ll post photos of the other challenge quilts in the next few days, as well as pictures of some of the amazing quilts the girls made in the past year, which they showed off at ‘show and tell’ on the Friday night.