Rhonda Bracey: At Random

Another big one! And all hand appliqued too. The person who’d appliqued the leaves used the tiniest little running stitches! Such a lot of work.

The first thing was to stabilise the quilt and add emphasis to the leaves — they looked liked misshapen blobs when I took the quilt out of the bag. Then I realised they were grape leaves or similar. So my first task was to stitch the veins for all 63 leaves, using matching threads in various brands and colours and just freeform stitching them. I used  light grey Deco-Bob thread in the bobbin for the entire quilt.

Then I looked closely at the hand stitched applique work and I wasn’t 100% sure that the edges wouldn’t lift, so I used clear and smoke invisible thread to stitch down the edges — clear thread for the lighter coloured leaves, and smoke thread for the darker ones.

Once I had the leaves stabilised, the next decision was how to quilt all that ‘white space’. I decided to do an all-over leaf motif, in a thread that closely matched the calico.

Here’s the quilt in my Sweet Sixteen — I had both table extensions out and still it hung over the sides.

The finished quilt and the back:

My fifth community quilt was obviously made by the same person who made number 3. Same blocks, same fabrics, same stitching, slightly different layout. So I quilted it the same as Community Quilt 3, as the same ‘rules’ applied.