Rhonda Bracey: At Random

This was a BRIGHT quilt top!

I started by stitching in the ditch around the centre diamonds (and found out not all were diamonds…), then the borders.

As the centre panel was so bright and busy, I just did a simple angled straight line in the centres of each diamond (in red thread), filling in the diamonds in every second row with a filler design.

What to do with that expanse of cream fabric in the large border? I decided to try something new — a motif I’ll now call ‘Blowing in the wind’ as it reminds me of swirling winds. I stitched a sweeping line/S curve out to a curved pointed end, then echoed a couple of times, then started a new sweeping curve. Once I’d finished them all, I echoed around the entire design, then did a perpendicular up/down filler to make the wind swirls ‘pop’. I quite liked the effect and will add this to my repertoire. It was pretty easy to do and didn’t take long.

For the outer border, I echoed stitched about a half inch away from the seam, and then marked the width of my Line Tamer ruler from that stitched line and stitched another line to give me a space to work in. I then measured and marked approximately every 4″ across the length of each border between those stitching lines, and created diamonds from them, reflecting the diamonds in the centre panel.

(Click on a photo to view it larger)

Threads used:

• Top: Fil-Tec Glide ‘Cardinal’ (40 wt, trilobal polyester, colour 70001); Fil-Tec Affinity ‘Wheat’ (40 wt, trilobal polyester, [variegated] colour 60300)
• Bottom: Fil-Tec Magna Glide Classic pre-wound bobbin