Rhonda Bracey: At Random

I bought one of those little slide/film negative scanners today. After figuring out how to work it (instructions were terrible!) — and after finding my stash of negatives — I started the VERY long project of scanning in all my old negatives. This could take years… I have over 3000 negatives from my year in Canada alone!

Anyhow, some of the first bundles of negatives I pulled out happened to have pictures of the first-ever quilts I made back in the late 1980s (I think I made my first quilt in 1987). And also some photos of some tapestries I did before I got into quilts (I made them some time between 1979 and 1985, though I have no idea when exactly).

Here they are (click a small image to see a larger version of it)…

Very astute observers might recognise some of the fabrics in the log cabin quilt — I had plenty left over and used some of them 20 years later in my Challenge 28 quilt!

I heard about the Leah Day free motion quilting project some time back — she had decided to video 365 different free motion quilting designs and share them for free via YouTube and her websites. Trying out her designs was something I’d had on my ‘to do’ list for a while. And over the past couple of weekends, I’ve had a chance to do so.

I set up my laptop in the sewing room and connected via my WiFi connection to the internet and off I went! So far, I’ve made about 30 samples of her designs. Some are easy, some will take a bit more practice to flow smoothly, and some just do my head in!! 😉

Here’s the photo I took this morning before starting:

Do you like the view from my sewing room? 😉

Behind the laptop is my overlocker (pushed back to allow space for the laptop). In the machine is some bright green rayon thread, with red thread in the bobbin so I can see when I need to adjust the tension (later, I changed later to Bobbinful as I was using so much thread).

On the sewing machine extension table is a completed quilt sandwich in cream, basted to allow for four designs per sandwich. And the sandwiches are the correct size to go into plastic insert sleeves and into a file when I’m done. I’m also using a Sharpie to label each design with the names Leah’s given them so I can refer back to the video if there’s a design I want to use but can’t remember how to create it.

I’m using the spring free motion quilting foot and a Supreme Slider. I’ve set the free motion pivot to -5 and my tension is 1.8 (this is in case I don’t remember!).

Oh, and Leah’s site is such a valuable resource for quilters that I’ve done the right thing and sent her a donation.