Rhonda Bracey: At Random

This small dark quilt was a challenge. How to quilt it to enhance the depth of the colours, while not overpowering the quilt with the quilting?

The first decision was what thread to use. I didn’t want a very dark thread as that would’ve hidden the quilting, so I opted for a variegated thread in rich orange, copper, ginger, red, and peach tones.

I started by doing straight line quilting from the piano key border into the adjoining row of blocks, following the existing seam lines of those blocks. But when I looked at the other side’s piano key border, it didn’t marry up with the seam lines of those blocks, so I had to abandon that idea for the other side. What to do?

I’d seen quilts that blended one motif into another but hadn’t tried it myself, so I sort of did that. The motif I used for the blocks next to the straight line blocks was a curved open headband motif with squared off edges, and then the one for the blocks and piano key border adjacent to that was a full circular spiral design, thus varying the quilting from one edge to the other from straight lines to circular lines.

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