Rhonda Bracey: At Random

Last October (2019) I attended the Quilt Symposium in Auckland, and one of the classes I took was a 2-day whole cloth mosaic class with Chris Kenna, a NZ quilt artist. I got the top completed in the two days, but it’s taken until now to finish the quilt ready for exhibiting in a local art awards (textile category) and then perhaps putting it up for sale in my Etsy store. The final dimensions are approx 1 m x 1m, so it’s fairly big! I’ve called it ‘We need the bees’.

Some of the things I did to complete it:

• Made the quilt sandwich. I used a large piece of handbag foam (I don’t know what else you call it; an example is ‘Soft and Stable’) as the wadding and plain black fabric for the backing. The foam added a lot of stability to the quilt, stopping it from curling with the density of the quilting, yet keeping the whole piece light and tactile.
• Free-motion quilted (FMQ’d) over the existing design on the top in matching threads.
• FMQ’d more petals in between the appliqued petals, using threads that matched the colours in the appliqued petals.
• FMQ’d the bee, using silver thread for its wings.
• FMQ’d the black background, leaving an area immediately around the bee unquilted.
• Squared up the quilt, and added a black binding in the same fabric as the top and back.

Click on a photo to view it larger.