Rhonda Bracey: At Random

This was one busy quilt! It was all scraps, and in my opinion it looks far better from a distance than it did close up. That’s not to say it was ‘ugly’ — just a real mish-mash of fabrics, prints, and colours, typical of a scrappy quilt. But from a distance, the optical illusion created by the blocks outlined in dark blue is quite striking.

How to quilt it? Well, it was so busy that I didn’t want to quilt anything that was too overpowering; likewise, I didn’t want to just ‘stitch in the ditch’ though it was tempting to do so. Instead, I went for the opposite of the straight edges in this quilt and quilted big circles, bubbles, pebbles — whatever you want to call them. I wasn’t too precious about getting them exact — as you can see from the photos!; the whole idea was to soften the straight edges of the top’s very geometric design.

(Click on a photo to view it larger)

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Threads used:

• Top:  Fil-Tec Glide ‘Rock Navy’ (40 wt, trilobal polyester; colour #30001)
• Bobbin: Wonderfil Deco-Bob (80wt, colour DB 245)