Rhonda Bracey: At Random

I’ve never done a ‘whole cloth’ quilt before, though I’ve admired those I’ve seen. For those not familiar with the term, a whole cloth quilt is created from one piece of fabric for the top — no piecing, no blocks sewn together, no applique. Typically, the single piece of fabric is one colour with no pattern in it, often a light colour like cream or white, though I have seen some stunning whole cloth quilts done in black. The decoration comes from the quilting.

My challenge with this quilt was to take someone’s whole cloth top that they had carefully marked (the blue lines) in 12″ squares and a 4″ (?) border, and make something of it. Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, I followed the markings the creator had made, then added fills where I thought they were necessary. I didn’t do ANY ruler work in this piece — all the ‘straight’ lines are either deliberately wonky, or are done by ‘eyeballing’ an imaginary straight line.

The centre square was the only one that didn’t have any markings, so I found a picture of a square Celtic knot and printed it out then marked it up with orange chalk.

The person who marked up this quilt did an awesome job in the ‘borders’ as she segued from one design to another in a seamless manner.

I REALLY REALLY hope that when this quilt gets washed before it gets given away that the marks come out! That said, the back looks pretty stunning too! 😉

(Some of the photos weren’t as good as I’d like — it was pretty windy outside and rain was threatening)

(Click on a photo to view it larger)

Some of the designs after I had only stitched the marked lines:

And then I quilted each square….

I started with this one, as I figured that 1/8″ straight lines creating a checkerboard effect of about 1″ diamonds would suit the markings:

With the central Celtic knot design, I did some very tight scribble stitching inside the background areas, then less and less tight stitching heading out to the edge to the 12″ square. I was really pleased with how it came out, as my original intention was to do tight scribble stitching for the entire square. However, I thought it might pull the quilt out of shape if I did that, so I changed tack and made the outer areas far less tight, though it’s still scribble stitching.

Detail of some of the border designs:

And this is the back:

Time taken: About 6 hours or so (maybe 10??? — I wasn’t keeping track…)

Threads used:

• Top: Fil-Tec ‘Glide’ (40 wt trilobal polyester, Cream, colour 20001)
• Bottom: Fil-Tec Glide pre-wound bobbin (white)