October | 2012 | Rhonda Bracey: At Random

Challenge Quilt 2012: My finished piece

19 10 2012

I set this year’s challenge for our annual quilting retreat. I had all sorts of possibilities running around in my head for this, but settled on these lines from the poem:

Of ragged mountain ranges…

I love her far horizons

I love her jewel-sea

For the quilting workshop I attended in Texas in March, I chose a photo that matched those lines and used it for my project. I finished the project when I returned to Australia, and I’ve also used it for this year’s challenge. Double-dipping at its best 😉

Here’s the original photo of the beach at Port Douglas, far north Queensland that was my inspiration for the art quilt I made (click on a photo to view it larger):

And here’s the finished art quilt, which uses elements from the photo without trying to be an exact reproduction of it:

I used Gloria Loughman’s technique for creating a 1/4″ inner framing border and I think it worked well, as did the 1″ dark framing border (in a lovely Aboriginal-style fabric), thus making this look like a framed picture.

This one is not for sale — I’m giving it a US friend who LOVES Australia and has been on holiday with us to far north Queensland.

For the process I used to make this art quilt and the workshop I did in Texas, see these blog posts:

By the way, I SO enjoyed the workshop week in Texas that I’m going to repeat it again in 2013 when I go to the US: http://www.quilting-adventures.com/spring-quilting-seminars/session2/ (I’m registered for the Velda Newman workshop)

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Categories : Quilts and fabric stuff

Community Quilt 17

7 10 2012

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

Click on an image to view it larger.

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Tags: community quilts
Categories : Quilts and fabric stuff

2012 FMQ Challenge: October

7 10 2012

I enjoyed October’s FMQ Challenge from Teri Lucas.

This is my first attempt — no practice pieces this time! To make the quilting stand out, I used a plain maroon/burgundy fabric and a contrasting variegated thread.

I may do more later, but the rest of this month is pretty busy for me, so I’m not sure when I’ll get to it. I’d like to try the nautilus shell motif that Teri shows in her tutorial — my first attempts at drawing it were abyssmal 😉

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Categories : Quilts and fabric stuff

Community Quilt 16

1 10 2012

This one was awkward. The quilt top was in colours that didn’t ‘speak’ to me, and in fabrics that I would never choose. In addition, all the setting triangles and possibly the main ‘diamonds’ were cut on the bias, so this quilt top was very wonky and wouldn’t sit flat, no matter what I did. There was a lot of puckering overall, and within the individual diamonds (had they been cut on the square and with the grain, then stitched, I might have had a fighting chance…).

As a result, my main objective in quilting this quilt was to ‘beat it into submission’ and get rid of all the wonky bits by quilting it fairly heavily. Even so, there were a couple of places where I still ended up with some puckers, and one place where I had to tuck an excess piece of fabric under at the seam to avoid a pleat.

All these bias issues meant that this was not a quilt that was going to lend itself to feature quilting in each square. An all over design was needed! As the fabrics were nearly all small florals I went with a 5-petal flower and small leaf motif.

With such a tight motif, I needed to use a thread that blended with the fabric and didn’t show easily. I chose a Superior Thread ‘Rainbows’ variegated thread in pink, tan, olive, and cream (40 wt, colour #806), and for the bobbin I used a Superior Threads King Tut cream thread (40 wt, ‘Papyrus’ — colour #972).

I ended up doing 170,000 quilting stitches, taking between 6 and 8 hours (I didn’t measure my time, but it was over two days).

Click on a photo to see it larger.