Rhonda Bracey: At Random

This was a HUGE scrappy quilt! I had to fold it quite a bit over the clothesline to keep it off the ground when I took the photos. The person who created this quilt top used a massive range of scrappy fabrics to make her half-square triangles and the overall effect is quite lovely (though not ‘my’ colours).

How to quilt it? Well, stitching in the ditch for ESS wasn’t an option I relished! So I decided to fall back on an old stalwart design I haven’t stitched for a while — open headbands. I used a lovely Affinity thread (from Fil-Tec) in variegated browns and it was perfect for this quilt. It also stitched like a dream and didn’t break or shred once in the entire quilt.

The edges of the border were starting to pull apart so I used Elmer’s washable school glue to hold them down. Originally I was going to do ‘piano key’ stitching in the border, but realised that as soon as the quilt was trimmed, the stitches would be cut and start pulling apart again. Instead, I decided to stitch perpendicular to the border fabrics, about 1″ away from the main part of the quilt, then echoed those stitches every 1″ to near the edge of the border. That seemed to work, and once trimmed, the stitches all stayed in place.

The only problem I had with this quilt was its sheer bulk — even with my extension tables and the large throat of my Sweet Sixteen, I struggled to pivot and turn this quilt. It WAS big.

(Click on a photo to view it larger.)

Threads used:

• Top: Fil-Tec Affinity ‘Brunette’ (40 wt, trilobal polyester, colour #60291)
• Bottom: Wonderfil Deco Bob (80 wt, colour DB 414)

This was a fairly ordinary scrappy quilt (MY opinion only — others may love it), but that white space just screamed out for some chevron-style quilting I’ve seen a lot of recently.

I stitched echoing straight lines 1/2″ from the edges of the 4-patch blocks, then filled those white areas with a continuous line ‘zigzag’, with the lines between 1/8 and 1/4″ apart. No I didn’t measure them or mark them or use a ruler — I just free motion stitched those lines. Perfection wasn’t my aim — the effect was. And I think I achieved that.

After I’d finished the white areas, I had some quite puffy 4-patches, so I just free motion stitched a sort of circle with a line going through it through each of them. That idea came out of my head and I take full responsibility for it ;-).

For the brown border, I used the same white thread to add a single line of straight stitching (this time I used my Line Tamer ruler!) to give the effect of a picture frame. And then I did big meandering stippling in the outer border.

(Click on a photo to view it larger.)

Threads used:

• Top: Wonderfil Silco (40 wt, colour #SC03)
• Bottom: Bobbinfil (white)