Rhonda Bracey: At Random

This was such a cute quilt! All those spotted owls… The Community Quilt Coordinator gave it to me hoping I’d do a great job on it — I hope it lives up to your expectations, Gwen 😉

This quilt took me 8+ hours to quilt. First I stitched ESS (‘every stinking seam’ [from Cindy Needham]) in invisible thread, and I mean EVERY stinking seam… including around all the applique pieces of each owl. Then I used a variegated green thread to stitch a different filler motif in each block. I quite like how the different stitches give different personalities to the owls — the black one, for example, looks like he’s scared.

In keeping with the owl theme, I stitched really long bird feathers from the centre of each border out to the corners. I tried something different for these feathers — I put TWO different threads in the top, using a size 18 needle to make sure they had enough room to pass through. I thought I’d get a lot of breakage or shredding, but I got very little. The combination of the fluoro orange and the yellow thread came out a really nice yellow orangey colour.

I was quite pleased with how the whole quilt turned out. There’s a cute frog fabric on the back too 😉

(Click on a photo to view it larger)

Threads used:

• Top: Fil-Tec ‘Affinity’ (‘Chartru’, colour #60156, 40 wt, variegated polyester); Fil-Tec ‘Glide’ (‘Neon Orange’, colour #90811, 40 wt, polyester); Fil-Tec ‘Glide’ (‘Marigold’, colour #80130, 40 wt, polyester)
• Bobbin: Wonderfil Invisifil (100 wt, lime green, colour IF 702)