How to quilt this quilt? As usual, I started by stitching the ditch around all the main blocks and elements. For the border, I did a large meandering stipple, with stars in the corner squares. In the main top, the busy fabrics leant themselves to a simple motif — I chose my ‘go to’ open headband motif, using red thread.
(Click on a photo to view it larger)
Threads used:
This small, bright scrappy quilt should cheer up a child in hospital. It had a soft flannel backing too, so will be nice and cuddly. I kept the quilting simple, but reasonably dense because the variety of fabrics used resulted in quite a few wonky seams and puckers.
(Click on a photo to view it larger)
Back:
Threads used:
I liked this quilt, though it was a bit of a challenge to quilt because it was quite wonky. The reason this quilt top was so wonky was because the maker had used all sorts of plaid shirting fabrics + denim to make it — those different fabrics had different thicknesses and ‘hand’, resulting in the fabric reacting in different ways to being sewn. This was not the maker’s fault – it’s just a consequence of using widely varying fabrics.
But those wonky seams and the puckering in this quilt top needed to be tamed — either by ironing them out or stitching them out. I chose the ‘stitch it out’ method because I didn’t think ironing would’ve worked in the long term. This meant I needed to use fairly dense stitching to beat those puckers into submission 🙂 To achieve this end, I decided to quilt it using a ‘square meander’, crossing lines to form sort of rectangular shapes. And yes, I tamed it!
(Click on a photo to view it larger)
Back:
Threads used:
This was a pretty pink and green quilt. I started by stitching in the ditch around the main blocks and borders, then did straight lines in the border, following (approximately) the lines formed by the squares in the fabric’s pattern. I quilted the main part of the quilt top with a flower variation on the open headband motif — instead of an arc for the final layer, I stitched half shells, emulating flower petals.
(Click on a photo to view it larger)
Threads used:
We bought a new car earlier this month to replace my husband’s car. We didn’t need to, but decided to do so for several reasons:
He traded his 1998 model Mazda 626 Classic Sedan for a Mazda CX-5 Touring model. And it’s very nice!!!!
In the almost 20 years (April 1998 to December 2017) he had the 626, he drove 183,466 km in it (114,000 miles). At least 70% of those kilometres were driven in the first 10 years when we lived in Perth and he was commuting to work. The car didn’t get driven as much once he retired and we moved to the country in 2007. But it was a good and faithful servant, giving us basically no bother at all. It was sad to say goodbye to it, but we’ve stuck with Mazda as our previous experience with the brand has been very good (I had a Mazda Astina from 1997 to 2012 and only changed because I had an offer ‘too good to refuse’ to purchase my current car).
Here’s hoping the CX-5 also gives us 20 years of great service.
The first two weeks of December were super busy. In addition to my normal work, these things happened — some planned, some not — many of which required tradies in and out of the house:
I used a pattern from Four Paws Quilting, called ‘Not So Crazy‘, to make this quilt from a heap of beige scrap fabrics. I added some aqua scrap fabrics as well, and some brownish ones. As I was putting it together, I realised that the colours reminded me of the beaches near where I live — white/beige sand, aqua water, brown seaweed washed up on shore, colourful umbrellas (the stripe fabric), swimsuits (dotted fabric), and eating fish and chips at the beach (the chips/fries fabric and the newspaper fabric). The name ‘Crazy Beach’ comes from that, plus a play on words…
I added an aqua border to the quilt top and finished it with a beige binding. For the quilting, I stitched undulating lines (representing waves) across the quilt, leaving some areas unquilted (the calmer water between the waves). In the border I stitched a very stylised up-and-down scallop shell motif I made up. The back is a soft Egyptian cotton in a mid-beige.
Back:
We were in Albany last weekend, and on the drive out to Emu Point we saw heaps of signs warning us of turtle crossings (their nesting time is October to December), and quite a few for bandicoots, neither of which are very common signs in Australia. I like how they think turtles can go 40 km/h!
I started by stitching in the ditch around all the blocks and borders, around the circles containing the birds, around the scalloped edge inside the circles, and then around each bird. I then did a smallish stipple in the white space around each bird to make the bird ‘pop’, and continued the stipple in the brown borders.
I left the cream and green borders unstitched, then did a straight stitch following the direction of the striped in the main border.
(Click on a photo to view it larger)
Threads used:
How to quilt this quilt with all those Dresden plates and all that white space?
I started by stitching in the ditch around all the plates and into their centres, where I stitched a little floral motif, then around the brown border. I decided to leave the ‘arms’ of each plate unstitched, letting the ditch stitching make them pop.
For the outer border, I did a large meandering stipple, and for all that white space surrounding the Dresden plates, I did some McTavishing.
(Click on a photo to view it larger)
Threads used:
Rhonda Bracey: At Random 