Rhonda Bracey: At Random

How to quilt this quilt? While I decided, I stitched in the ditch along all the zigzag lines for the verticals of the ‘hexagons’ created from the half strips. Then, because the quilt top design was so geometric, I decided to quilt circles. But they aren’t real circles — in fact, not one would meet the criteria for a real circle, but they give the illusion of circles.

I didn’t use any rulers for the circles — instead, I did very curved ‘S’ shapes coming close the centre point of each edge, then crossing in the middle of a join to do the other side of the ‘S’ on the other side of each hexagon, all the way to the top edge, then back down. If you look closely at the stitching you’ll see how I did that. It was pretty quick, and HOURS quicker than using rulers! The effect was still the same, and as this quilt isn’t for a show, these simple circles fitted the bill perfectly.

And I liked how the stitch-in-the-ditch stitching set off the circles, too.

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Back:

Threads used:

• Top: Superior Rainbows (40 wt, trilobal polyester, colour 818)
• Bottom: Fil-Tec Magna Glide Classic pre-wound bobbin (white)

The busy-ness of this big scrappy quilt didn’t lend itself to custom quilting, so I quilted it with a single-line, all-over ‘open headband‘ motif using a variegated thread.

(Click on a photo to view it larger)

Back:

Threads used:

• Top: Fil-Tec Harmony ‘Autumn’ (40 wt, cotton, colour 14081)
• Bottom: Fil-Tec Magna Glide Classic pre-wound bobbin (light tan)