Rhonda Bracey: At Random

This was an odd quilt. Odd shapes, odd colour combinations. (As always, my opinion only! I don’t make them — I just quilt them.)

How to quilt it? Well, for starters, I stitched in the ditch around all the dark shapes. I was thinking of doing something geometric in the pink areas, but I only had three small spools of various pale pink threads from different manufacturers, so I decided to do an all-over motif so that it wasn’t obvious where I changed threads as each spool ran out. I mostly did a combination of feathers and spirals.

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Threads used:

• Top: Gutermann Sulky variegated pale pink ( 40 wt, rayon, colour 2100); Robison-Anton (40 wt, rayon, pale pink — no idea of the colour as the label went missing long ago); Madeira Rayon (40 wt, rayon, colour 11120)
• Bottom: Fil-Tec Magna Glide Classic pre-wound bobbin

This quilt was a real challenge. It had a high-loft polyester batting in it, which, while it may make the quilt very warm to snuggle under, is an absolute sod to quilt as it’s SO puffy. However, the maker had hand basted it, so it stayed together reasonably well. But even with that, there’s no way you can keep it from puckering, except by quilting the life out of it.

To control the puffiness, I stitched in the ditch (in a pale blue thread) around all the blocks and borders, and then around and within all the appliqued centres of each block. But still there was a lot of puffiness in those centres and in the borders. I decided to leave the plain blue border and the appliqued centres puffy so that they remain very tactile.

For the outer border, I just did a large meandering stipple in the blue thread to hold the layers together. This was a ‘busy’ fabric, so there was no point in dong anything very clever in this outer border. Besides, the polyester batting wanted to escape so I had to stitch in such a way to hold it in and to not cause puckers in the border.

For the blocks, I decided to beat the puffiness in the white areas into submission by McTavishing around each appliqued centre. It took quite a bit of time, but I think it was worth it.

Did I mention it was big?

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Still very puffy even after stitching in the ditch around everything

Threads used:

• Top: Robison-Anton ‘Paris blue’ (40 wt, rayon, colour 2283); Wonderfil Silco (40wt, white, colour SC03)
• Bottom: Fil-Tec Magna Glide Classic pre-wound bobbin (white)

I think someone tried to use up some of their scraps for this quilt. Although there were some quite nice fabrics in this mishmash, the combinations just didn’t work for me. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason as to how the maker had put the fabrics together. The quilt looked OK from a distance, but up close it was hard on the eyes. And there was 1980s dusky green sheeting on the back.

How to quilt this ‘busy’ quilt? There was too much going on with the fabrics to do anything complex, so I went with a very simple 8-pointed wonky star in each block, after first stitching in the ditch around each block. I continued the theme in the sashing joins, stitching a little 8-pointed wonky star there too.

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Threads used:

• Top: Fil-Tec Glide ‘Mint’ (40 wt, trilobal polyester, colour 60345)
• Bottom: Fil-Tec Magna Glide Classic pre-wound bobbin (white)

I liked the apparent simplicity of this quilt, yet when you deconstruct it to see how it was put together, it was quite complex. I also liked the colours.

How to quilt it?

1. I started by stitching in the ditch around the centre design, and around the borders.
2. Then I echo stitched a 1/2 inch from these lines, and about 3 inches out from the purple border’s seams.
3. I decided to let the centre design ‘pop’, so stitched quite heavily in the negative space, using my variation of McTavishing.
4. For the outer border, I decided to emulate the spikiness of the central design and marked points (orange chalk marks) to create the triangles.
5. At each outer border corner, I stitched a stylised leaf, though perhaps I should have attempted a ladybug (as you would’ve done, Joan C!).

I really liked the finished quilt and am very pleased with how I quilted it. I hope WAQA consider using this one as a raffle quilt.

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Back:

Threads used:

• Top: Mettler Metrosene (polyester, 40 wt?, colour 781 [off-white used for most of the stitching on this quilt]; Gutermann (polyester, 40 wt?, colour 156 [red around the ladybugs]; Madeira (rayon, 40 wt, colour 1169 [green for the stitch-in-the-ditch in the border]; Gutermann (polyester, 40 wt?, colour 810 [purple around the flowers]
• Bottom: Fil-Tec Magna Glide Classic pre-wound bobbin (white)

Another ‘eye spy’ quilt, with lots of busy-ness going on in the fabric colours and patterns.

How to quilt it? Well, an all-over motif was the logical choice, in a thread colour (dark purple) that blended. I did what I’m calling a ‘Lady Liberty’ motif — start with an arc, then come back over the arc with upside-down V-shaped spikes, start the next arc, repeat…

You should be able to see what I mean by looking closely at the centre photo and the back.

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Back”

Threads used:

• Top: Madeira (rayon, 40 wt, colour #1112 [dark purple])
• Bottom: Fil-Tec Magna Glide pre-wound bobbin (lead gray)

This pretty pastel quilt had lots of conflicting motifs — ragged circles, embroidered cupcakes in squares, and a variety of colours.

How to quilt it?

1. Using a pastel variegated thread, I stitched in the ditch around all the blocks, including the inner squares of the cupcake blocks and around each cupcake.
2. Next were the circles — I echo stitched in between the existing spirals, then flowed off the spiral motif into a large meander around the circles.
3. I echo quilted the cupcakes, then did a heart/leaf motif in the surrounding strips.
4. With a soft green thread, I stitched a straight line in the border around the entire quilt, 1/2 inch from the border’s seam.
5. Finally, I used one of my Handi Quilt scallop/shell rulers and stitched the borders n that same green thread. I just did the echo quilting around the scallops free hand (no ruler or marking). I still haven’t figured out how to do corners with these rulers! Even if you mark the centres and work out how many half circles you need, the rulers still slip and go off-kilter <grrr>. So only one of the corners in the borders looks even vaguely right.

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Back:

Threads used:

• Top: Silco (colour #SCM03 [variegated pastel]); Madeira (rayon, 40 wt, colour 1047 [soft green in border])
• Bottom: Fil-Tec Magna Glide Classic pre-wound bobbin (white)

Even though I’m not really a fan of pink, I quite liked this flying geese quilt. But how to quilt it?

I decided to go simple by stitching in the ditch around all the geese and their panels, and then stitching a border line about 1/2 an inch from each panel. And that was it. I could’ve done much more, but to be honest I though that what I’d done was enough to enhance the quilt. (BTW, I started using my Line Tamer ruler for stitching around each of the geese, but that took too long, so I just did it without the ruler for five of the panels — the centre photo below shows my freehand ‘straight’ lines without the ruler; however, I did use the ruler for the echo stitching around each panel.)

Surprisingly, the thread I used wasn’t pink but was a variegated thread of yellows and purples! It blended in well.

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Threads used:

• Top: Wonderfil Mirage (30 wt, rayon?, colour SD 32)
• Bottom: Fil-Tec Magna Glide Classic pre-wound bobbin (white)

This ‘eye spy’ quilt was SO busy with all those fabrics and colours that the simplest thing to do was a big meandering stipple! No stitch in the ditch at all — I just started from about the centre and worked my way out and around until it was all done.

I used a variegated thread in multiple shades of purple and it worked well, I thought.

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Threads used:

• Top: Fil-Tec Harmony ‘Violets’ (40 wt, variegated cotton, colour 14072)
• Bottom: Fil-Tec Magna Glide Classic pre-wound bobbin (lead gray)

I started by stitching in the ditch along all the seams in this quilt. Then to make the colours pop, I stitched ‘wonky’ straight lines in the black bars and a sort of squared off spiral in the large and small on-point squares.

For the border, I did a squared off open headband motif.

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Threads used:

• Top: Fil-Tec Glide ‘Black’ (40wt trilobal polyester, colour 11001)
• Bottom: Fil-Tec Magna Glide Classic pre-wound bobbin (black)