Rhonda Bracey: At Random

I loved the colours of this quilt! The aqua and black and white were so fresh and crisp, and set off perfectly by the plain black backing fabric.

With the colours and the wavy blocks, my first thought was to quilt it with parallel lines (with curved ends) emulating water, then I thought perhaps large bubbles (as in breaking waves), but decided on large spirals to emulate waves and water turbulence as I was on a deadline to finish this one and needed to quilt it with something that was big and that covered a lot of area fairly quickly.

It was a big quilt, so I used my bungee cord system to reduce drag and the weight of the quilt when moving it under the needle.

It took about 2 hours to stitch in the ditch around each block first, then about another 2 hours to do the spirals.

(Click on a photo to view it larger)

Threads used:

• Top: Fil-Tec Glide ‘Mint’ (40 wt, trilobal polyester, colour #60345)
• Bottom: Fil-Tec Magna Glide pre-wound bobbin (black)
• Needle: Size 18

This large quilt was unusual in that it was made up of 9 large rectangles of fabric divided by white sashing strips. From the ‘hand’ of the fabric, I suspect the rectangles were screen printed. I liked the almost Japanese feel of the fabric, with the indigo and the stylised chrysanthemums (that’s what I saw, anyway;-) It was quite a large quilt.

How to quilt it? I had some thoughts when I first saw it — perhaps uneven parallel lines almost like a tartan? Perhaps large circles or wreaths? My thoughts on this waxed and waned, but what didn’t change was my idea to quilt it using fluoro (neon) thread. I auditioned a few threads against the fabric, and while I quite liked fluoro orange against the dark blue, I decided to try something different and blend a fluoro lime green and fluoro pink! I’ve only stitched with two threads once before, and I was a bit hesitant as the weight of the combined threads through the needle eye might cause shredding or breakages. But I worried needlessly — the two threads I chose worked PERFECTLY through the size 18 needle I used, and I didn’t have a single thread issue across the whole quilt.

As far as the quilt motif went, I decided to follow the organic roundness of the flowers (or are they fireworks?) and do a mostly rounded motif, with some ‘flames’ scattered between. In the end I did lots of spirals, segueing into flames and/or bubbles. I really liked how the threads played together — despite them being fluoro pink and lime green, the overall effect is a sort of thick yellow, and it’s only when you get close that you can see the different threads weaving around each other.

One final thing — if you’re ever handing off your quilts for someone else to quilt (or if you’re going to quilt them yourself) PLEASE make sure that ALL pins are removed from inside the quilt layers. I ran over a small safety pin a couple of times and was just very lucky that I didn’t break a needle, jam the needle in the bobbin case, and/or throw the timing out on my machine. Had the timing been thrown out, it would have cost me a 4-hour round trip to the city plus about $50 to $100 to get it fixed!! That’s one expensive safety pin!

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The back:

The tiny safety pin that I missed, which was buried inside the quilt layers:

Threads used:

• Top: Both Isacord 40 wt threads — colours 1940 and 6010
• Bottom: Fil-Tec Magna Glide pre-wound bobbin (60 wt, white)

I quilted four Community Quilts on my quilting retreat weekend last weekend. I didn’t keep track of the threads I used, so unlike the others I’ve documented, you won’t get thread choices in these posts.

What a pretty quilt this was! Navy and yellows just go so well together. There was a lot of work in this quilt, and like #152, it just cried out for different quilting motifs in each block.

As usual, I started by stitching in the ditch around each block, then around each appliqued piece. Once that was done (yes, it took a few hours…), I tackled each block separately, deciding on one or more quilting motifs to stitch in it. I did all the navy blue stitching first, then the stitching with the yellow thread.

(Click on a photo to view it larger)

I quilted four Community Quilts on my quilting retreat weekend last weekend. I didn’t keep track of the threads I used, so unlike the others I’ve documented, you won’t get thread choices in these posts.

This quilt just screamed out for different quilting motifs in each block, so that’s what I did! I stitched in the ditch around each block first, and around the appliqued centres, before stitching a different rounded motif in each block.

I did a large meandering stipple in the outer border in a variegated thread that blended with the fabric.

(Click on a photo to view it larger)

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