Rhonda Bracey: At Random

I kept this one a while before deciding how to quilt it. The blue pinwheels were quite small and dense and then there was that great expanse of white space to deal with. How to quilt it???

I started with the central pinwheel area first. I thought about ‘stitch in the ditch’, but then decided to do hopping arcs, thus creating the illusion of flowers or ‘cathedral windows’. I just did these free hand — no marking of any sort — so they are a bit wonky, but as this quilt isn’t going to be in a show, I wasn’t too fussed by a little wonkiness 😉 I did these in the blue areas (with a blue variegated thread) and in the cream areas too (with a matching thread).

The next decision was how to quilt all that white space. I thought of doing Zentangle-style doodling, but it was a hot day and I really didn’t want to spend another eight hours on this quilt, even in the air conditioning. Also, the pinwheels were the focus, not the white space. So I did another variation on the open headband motif — instead of doing a second and third arc back over the first, I made a few spiky star points, then arced back and started the next one. I made these quite big, which meant they were quick to stitch. The reason I chose the spiky start points was to reflect the points of the pinwheels.

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Threads used:

• Top: Superior Rainbows variegated blue (trilobal polyester, 40 wt, colour #817), and Fil-Tec Glide for the cream (trilobal polyester, 40 wt, colour #20001)
• Bobbin: Bobbinfil (white, 70 wt)