Rhonda Bracey: At Random

This was an odd quilt — I didn’t ‘see’ the pattern in it until I saw it as a thumbnail image on my camera, and by then I’d already quilted it ;-). The pink/purple with the cream/black/brown was also odd, although looking at it finished, it seems to work.

(Click on a photo to view it larger)

How to quilt it? Well, as there were so many odd-shaped blocks, I started by stitching in the ditch (ESS, yes EVERY one!). Then I quilted the small cream squares — in the ones surrounded by the cream and black floral fabric I stitched a wavy cross-hatch matrix, and on the ones surrounded by the black fabric I stitched a spiral.

I followed that by echo stitching 1/2″ in from the edges of each diamond shape, then repeating the wavy matrix in the diamonds within the cream/black floral, and spirals in the diamonds within the black fabrics. So that took care of those spaces.

Now, what to do for the odd-shaped beige spaces? I started by stitching the centre square in a big spiral, then came out from each corner with a snake-like sweep down the odd-shaped spaces, filling in with circles, then echoing the stitching about 1/4″ from the initial sweeps. I repeated that motif in the other odd-shaped cream spaces on the rest of the quilt.

For the large cream triangles, I stitched a large circle, surrounded by two smaller circles on each side. Then I straight stitched about 1/2″ in from the seams of the cream/black fabric pieces. I didn’t stitch the black fabric or the pink or brown triangles at all. For all of this stitching, I used a dark cream thread (I ran out of the Madeira, but fortunately had a Robison-Anton thread almost the same colour).

The border fabric was strange, with pink/blue/purple squarish shapes in it. I kept it simple by stitching a straight line 1/2″ in from the seam and 1″ in from the edge, then stitched perpendicularly between these two lines to create a ladder or bookshelf effect.

The only ruler I used was the Line Tamer for the long straight lines and stitching in the ditch — everything else was free motion quilted, including the perpendicular lines in the border.

The back:

Threads used:

• Top: Madeira (rayon, 40 wt, colour #1082); Robison-Anton ‘Platinum’ (rayon, 40 wt, colour #2571); Superior King Tut ‘Egyptian Princess’ (cotton, 40 wt, colour #947)
• Bottom: Bobbinfil (white)