Rhonda Bracey: At Random

This little quilt (yes, it was quite small compared to some others I’ve done) took an age to quilt. why? Well, I started by quilting the diagonal lines, then when I’d nearly finished them, I realised that something wasn’t quite right with the bobbin tension and so I unpicked all those lines. Once I got the tension sorted, I decided instead to quilt the straight horizontal lines, but once that was finished, those diagonals still stood out (they were marked and I’d stitched over them, so there were marks and needle punch holes), so I redid the diagonals. I quite like the effect once I’d finished.

But what to do for the border? I decided to pull out some rulers I bought some months ago and give them a go. Except for my favourite ‘Line Tamer’ ruler, I haven’t had much joy with rulers — they seem to cause me more frustration than anything else. I’m probably too impatient 😉 That said, I’m attending a rulers class that my awesome dealer, Michelle, is running this coming Saturday, so maybe I’ll feel more kindly about rulers in future.

Meantime, here are my attempts at ruler work. The main arcs and the lower arcs are all done with rulers; I did the echoing by eyeballing the shapes of the arcs.

And yes, more time was taken as I had to go slow with the rulers, but also because I stitched the back on itself — twice! and had to unpick it… <grrr> I think this small quilt ended up taking about five hours to quilt, when I thought it would be maybe an hour…

(Click on a photo to view it larger)

Threads used:

• Top: Superior King Tut (‘Cairo’ colour #932 [blue, yellow, green and purple variegated thread], 40 wt, cotton)
• Bobbin: Bobbinfil (black)