Rhonda Bracey: At Random

Ah! My first french braid quilt!

How to quilt it? Well, it needed to be stabilised first, so I stitched ESS… (every stinking seam!) in a beige/tan Rasant cotton. A few hours later, I was ready to look at what design I’d use. I was thinking straight line ‘modern’, but instead decided to try out a fleur-de-lis motif that I found the other day on the internet in the peach-coloured setting squares. I quite liked how they turned out and will likely use that motif again, perhaps in sashing or a narrow border.

I was still struggling with how to quilt the main top. But after taking a very close look at the fabric — which was mostly leaves and some flowers — I decided on an all-over, continuous line leaf motif, using a variegated thread in green, pink, yellow and very dark green (I think!).

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Back:

Threads used:

• Top: Fil-Tec Glide ‘Peach’ (40 wt, trilobal polyester; colour #50473); Superior King Tut ‘Old Giza’ (40 wt, variegated cotton, colour #941)
• Bobbin: Bobbinfil (70wt, cotton, white)

This was a nice bright quilt, but the bias edges of some of the blocks meant that there was some ‘wonkiness’ and puffiness that wasn’t going to settle down with some serious stitching to beat it into submission 😉

How to quilt it? Well, I wanted to soften all those straight edges and disguise the wonkiness as far as possible, so I decided to stitch it in an all-over, continuous line spiral motif. That helped tame the wonkiness a bit, and created some circular puffiness that hid the puffiness of the blocks caused by the bias.

I didn’t quilt the small black borders; had they been bigger, I probably would have. I didn’t want to stitch them by extending the same design as the main quilt top as I thought the orange stitching would dull the bold effect of the black.

(Click on a photo to view it larger)

Back:

Threads used:

• Top: Robison-Anton (40 wt, rayon, orange)
• Bobbin: Bobbinfil (70wt, cotton, white)

This small quilt was four cute kitten panels. My first task was to stabilise it, which I did by stitching around the borders (orange thread) and then around all the main elements in each panel (pastel variegated thread).

I decided not to quilt anything fancy in the borders as the cats needed to be the focal point, so I just did a straight line outline in a soft green thread.

Click on a photo to view it larger)

Threads used:

• Top: Robison-Anton (40 wt, rayon, orange); Superior Rainbows ‘Opal’ (40 wt, trilobal polyester, colour #808); Fil-Tec Glide ‘Sea Foam’ (40 wt, trilobal polyester, colour #97494)
• Bobbin: Bobbinfil (70wt, cotton, white)