Rhonda Bracey: At Random

This quilt top had lots of pinks and greens and florals. It also had a lot of even 9″ blocks — some full pieces of fabric, others of half pieces, while the remainder were 4- or 9-patch blocks. What to do?

First, I choose the possible thread colours, settling on a bright pink rayon for the large flower motifs. Yes, I decided to fill each block with a large free-form flower that had petals going out to each corner and centre side of each block. Later I decided to add small ‘bubbles’ in the centre of each flower, also in pink, though perhaps I could have done those in yellow.

After I’d quilted the large flowers, I felt the quilt needed something to make those flowers pop. This quilting had to be subtle and reasonably dense to allow the flower petals to puff out. So I chose a soft green thread and echo quilted each petal in it, then filled the remaining space with a small-ish stipple in the same green thread. The backing fabric was pretty pink floral on white, so I used a soft pink in the bobbin. I was glad I decided to echo quilt the petals as I think that adds quite a bit of subtle emphasis to the petals.

There are more than 130,000 stitches in this quilt.

Threads used:

• Pink: Floriani, 40 wt rayon, colour: PF106
• Green: Isacord, 40 wt polyester, colour Fb 5650 ‘Spring Frost’
• Bobbin: Wonderfil Deco-Bob, 80 wt, colour DB 205

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