Rhonda Bracey: At Random

A big quilt — with seed packets as the fabric theme! After stitching in the ditch around the blocks, I stitched a large meander in the main border. In the small border, I continuously stitched the word ‘seed’. Finally, I stitched a spiral motif in the main quilt top, using a matching pink/watermelon coloured thread.

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Threads used:

• Top: Fil-Tec Glide ‘Lipstick’ (40 wt, trilobal polyester, colour 91787)
• Bottom: Fil-Tec Magna Glide Classic pre-wound bobbin (candy apple red)

I don’t know what it is about batiks, but I just love them, and even though I’m not a fan of browns I loved the combination of colours used in this batik quilt. I decided to quilt it using a single-line squared meander, with piano keys in the border. All free-motion quilting — no rulers.

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Threads used:

• Top: Robison-Anton ‘Earthen Tan’ (40 wt, rayon, colour 2569)
• Bottom: Fil-Tec Magna Glide Classic pre-wound bobbin (light tan)

How to quilt this really big scrappy quilt, made from fabrics of all sorts of colours? First, I stitched in the ditch around each sashed area and the borders, then stitched piano keys in the end strips, with a large meandering motif in between the sashed areas (leaving the sashing unstitched). Finally, I stitched random-length piano keys in the yellow borders.

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Threads used:

• Top: Fil-tec Glide ‘Marigold’ (40 wt, trilobal polyester, colour 80130)
• Bottom: Fil-Tec Magna Glide Classic pre-wound bobbin (light tan)

How to quilt this big scrappy rail-fence style quilt? I decided to keep it simple, stitching large ‘n’ and ‘u’ shapes going cross-wide to the direction of the fabric in each block, then some more of them in the border, but this time of random length.

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Threads used:

• Top: Robison-Anton ‘Ming’ (40 wt, rayon, colour 2322)
• Bottom: Fil-Tec Magna Glide Classic pre-wound bobbin (white)

I loved the crisp summery colours of this quilt. The aqua and orange aren’t colours I would’ve chosen to go together, but they worked really well in this quilt.

I started by stitching in the ditch around each element of the quilt, then did some echoing and MacTavishing in the Hawaiian-style blocks, then some ‘straight’ stitching (not really straight, ‘cos I didn’t use rulers) in the on-point squares and the main border. I left other areas unquilted so they popped.

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Threads used:

• Top: Fil-Tec Glide ‘White’ (40 wt, trilobal polyester, colour 10000)
• Bottom: Fil-Tec Magna Glide Classic pre-wound bobbin (white)

Another quilt where I stitched one of the Jamie Wallen motifs in the white space. LOTS of stitching in the ditch on this one. For the border, I stitched wavy piano keys.

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Threads used: (no information on threads as I did this quilt a while ago and can’t remember what I used!)

Lots of various fabrics in this quilt! Any fancy quilting would get ‘lost’ in it, so I just did a large meandering stipple to hold all the layers together.

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First up — stitch in the ditch around EVERYTHING. Now, how to quilt it?

Because Jamie Wallen’s workshop was still fresh in my mind, I decided to do some large feathery things in the dark fabrics of the log cabin blocks, with some stippling in the white areas behind the appliqued flowers and their containers. For the border made from small squares, I did a half ‘cathedral window’ motif.

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Threads used: (no information on threads as I did this quilt a while ago and can’t remember what I used!)

A jelly roll quilt! How to quilt it? I decided to do a variation on the open headband and spiral motifs, combining them and adding rounded spikes emulating small suns or flowers.

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Threads used: (no information on threads as I did this quilt a while ago and can’t remember what I used!)

This big quilt had lots of white space and geometric blocks, all perfect for me to try out some of the designs I learned to draw the previous week at Jamie Wallen’s workshop!

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Threads used: (no information on threads as I did this quilt a while ago and can’t remember what I used!)