Rhonda Bracey: At Random

When I was in Memphis for a conference in March this year, I gave my friend Sue a pink quilt as she’d been on at me about making her one after seeing the pink quilt I made for my Mum for her 80th birthday. In the room at the time were my other best buddies, Char (from near Boston) and Dave (from near San Diego).

I already had a quilt planned for Dave — it was the art quilt of the beach at Port Douglas that I’d started the week before at the workshop in Texas, which I gave to him when he was in Australia and came and stayed with us last month. And Char had already been the recipient of my first art quilt, my dragonfly quilt. But I could see that Char wanted her own quilt 😉 So I asked her what colours she’d like if I made her a quilt too — she said ‘purple’.

When I got back home, I started her quilt using purple batiks from my stash, and a touch of green batiks as well. I used the ‘Ring around’ pattern from Four Paws Quilting.

I ended up with some offcuts that I sewed together into bands and used to help create a large piece of backing fabric. The green Jinny Beyer fabric I had wasn’t enough for the full backing and it was only 44″ wide, so I had to sew it together anyway. Adding the bands of offcuts hides the fact that I didn’t have enough fabric 😉 and adds visual interest to the back.

As Char lives near Boston, I used a pure wool batting for warmth. For the quilting, I did an all-over feather pattern using King Tut cottons for the top thread (‘Jewel of the Nile’) and in the bobbin (‘Oasis’).

I was going to give the quilt to Char next March, assuming we were both going to attend the conference as we have done for the past few years. But there have been changes made to the conference and she won’t be going. So I bundled it up and mailed it to her. She got it a few days ago, which means I can blog about it now 😉

Here’s Char’s Quilt (click on a photo to view it larger):