Rhonda Bracey: At Random

This was a quilt I quilted for a friend. It is a gift for someone, so even though I quilted it in December 2016, it’s not being given to the recipient until March 2017. Hopefully, the handover has been done now (I’m writing this in December for publication in early April).

I loved this quilt — I loved the colours, the white space, and the fabrics used. It really ‘spoke’ to me. As soon as I unfolded it, I saw citrus elements in it — oranges, lemons, limes — represented by the hexagons.

My brief was to quilt it ‘modern’ style and to emphasis the white space. I hope I did it justice.

How I quilted it:

• stitched in the ditch around all the coloured hexagons using a yellow thread
• free motion quilted pseudo citrus segments in the white hexagonal spaces, using bright citrus, fluoro/neon colours
• continued the coloured segments in a few of the edge hexagons, and in the half-white hexagons too
• for the remaining white hexagon spaces, I used white thread to stitch citrus segments
• for the border, I stitched a straight line about half an inch from the seam, then another about 2 inches away then free motioned citrus segment-style triangular shapes in the white space, all with white thread

All up, it took me 5 hours to quilt this quilt — 2 hours just for the stitch in the ditch step. I only used rulers for the stitch in the ditch process and for the straight lines in the border — everything else was free motion.

The photos vary based on how the light was catching the quilt. Click on a photo to view it larger.

Back:

Threads used:

• Top: Fil-Tec Glide ‘Neon Green’ (40 wt, trilobal polyester, colour 90360); Fil-Tec Glide ‘Neon Orange’ (40 wt, trilobal polyester, colour 90811);  Fil-Tec Glide ‘Mango’ (40 wt, trilobal polyester, colour 80116);  Fil-Tec Glide ‘White’ (40 wt, trilobal polyester, colour 10000); Isacord (40 wt, trilobal polyester, colour FB6010); Isacord (40 wt, trilobal polyester, colour 0600); Mettler Poly Sheen (40 wt, polyester, colour 1306)
• Bottom: Fil-Tec Magna Glide Classic pre-wound bobbin (white)