Rhonda Bracey: At Random

I wrote this post in November 2010, knowing it wouldn’t be published until late September/early October 2011, AFTER we’ve had our quilting retreat at Bobbie’s house. The reason: Our challenge piece is to remain secret from the other ladies — which is part of the fun of the challenge!

Flora set the 2011 challenge — and what a challenge it was! We are to make a monochromatic piece. That means ONE colour from the colour wheel only, with no blacks, whites, greys, creams etc. in the fabric. So, if you choose purple as your colour, then every fabric you use must ONLY have purples in it — no silver or gold flecks, no little black dots to make the purple darker, no reds in with the purple etc. Sounds easy. Yeah, until you have to actually choose your fabrics! Then you realise how many have other colours in them, often as part of a minute print.

So the first part of the challenge is choosing your colour, then your design, then your fabrics.

Early on I settled on pink as my colour, and I found a design that I liked that I adapted to suit the large lap quilt (more like a body quilt!) I wanted to make. I have a person in mind for this quilt, but that’s not to be revealed yet (and Sue — it’s NOT you! 😉 )

I had many pinks in my stash, but I bought a few more just so I could get the colour range right.

Here are my fabrics — I’ve used 12 different shades of pink from very deep pink to the lightest of pinks.

Here’s the design I had in mind:

And here’s what 70 four-and-a-half inch squares look like loosely pinned to the ‘design wall’:

Now comes the fun part… cutting all the sashing strips and ‘key’ squares, then sewing all the bits together.

A day or so later…

Here are the sashing strips (1.5 in x 4.5 inch) and sashing strips (1.5 x 4.5 in) stitched with the ‘key’ squares (1.5 x 1.5 in).

No, I didn’t cut out those individual ‘keys’ one by one — I’m not a masochist! 😉 I cut a long, 4.5 in wide, pale pink strip and a long 1.5 in wide dark pink strip, then sewed them together along the long edges. I then pressed the seams to the dark, then cross-cut many 1.5 in wide strips from the joined strip.

Next comes piecing the main top…

See also:

• Part 2: Piecing the top
• Part 3: The finished quilt