Rhonda Bracey: At Random

I’m nearly at 100 community quilts… three more to go! Though I’m not sure when I’ll reach that milestone as I know I have a LOT of drop-dead deadline work coming up between now and October.

This quilt was a quickie as it wasn’t very big (about 30 x 36 inches) and I quilted it with an all-over design. I did something a little different in the design — I combined a soft spiral with flames to create a sun-like effect, using a variegated pink and purple thread.

I hadn’t done this design before, but it was simple to do so I’ll probably use it again.

Oh, and this quilt had a pieced back too, so it’s reversible.

(Click on a photo to view it larger)

Back:

Threads used:

• Top: Superior King Tut ‘Egyptian Princess’ (40 wt, cotton, colour #947)
• Bobbin: Wonderfil Deco-Bob (cream, 80 wt, colour DB 112)

I was asked to see what I could ‘do’ with this quilt to hide the bits of pink that had run into the beige areas. One suggestion was to quilt it in pink thread. But as there wasn’t a lot of pink in the quilt top, I decided to take a different tack — distract the eye! Have so much else going on that no-one will notice the pink blotches.

First, I stitched straight lines using my Line Tamer ruler, about 1/4″ outside the diamonds, then I filled one of the long beige areas with feathers. I initially thought about doing feathers for all the beige areas, but realised that would be overkill. Instead, I decided to do all sorts of other rounded filler designs, and any feather-like strands went in opposite directions to the one closest to it. The reason I chose rounded fillers was to counteract the harsh straight lines of the diamonds.

In between starting and finishing this quilt, I took a rulers class, and so when it came to the outer borders, I decided to put some of my newly acquired knowledge into practice and did three 2″ layers of clam shells. I still have to figure out how to go around corners or end a row when the measurements are uneven, so I fudged it! Don’t look too closely at the corners as they are inventive 😉

I used the same variegated thread (in pink, beige, tan, and olive) throughout to create a unified effect.

(Click on a photo to view it larger)

Threads used:

• Top: Superior Rainbows (40 wt, trilobal polyester, colour #806)
• Bobbin: Wonderfil Deco-Bob (cream, 80 wt, colour DB 112)

I was really looking forward to quilting this quilt! I’d seen it from afar as it was being pin-basted at the Community Quilting Bee. As soon as I saw it from a distance, I just knew it was aching to be quilted in the ‘modern quilt’ style.

I started by using invisible thread on the hexagons to stitch them down and stitch in the ditch around them. Then I used my Line Tamer ruler to stitch straight vertical lines through the centres of the blowflies (or are they cicadas?).

Next, I stitched a continuous line of overlapping rectangles across all the border fabrics. Finally, I thought I’d add a touch more colour by using the centres of the flies/cicadas to create some coloured hexagons in thread to match the colours of the hexagons in the lower right corner.

(Click on a photo to view it larger)

Back:

Threads used:

• Top: Main thread: Gutermann Sulky (silvery grey [colour #1011], 40 wt, rayon); Minor threads: Fil-Tec Glide (‘Neon Orange’ colour #90811, 40 wt, polyester), Mettler Poly Sheen (bright pink [colour #1950], 40 wt, polyester), Floriani (peacock blue [colour #PF373], 40 wt, polyester?), Isacord (neon green [colour #Fb 6010/A2941], 40 wt, polyester)
• Bobbin: Wonderfil Invisifil (red, 100 wt, colour IF 202)

This was a sweet little quilt! In keeping with the heart fabric, I quilted hearts all over it, using a variegated green and tan thread. I left the centre block and outlined the design in invisible thread.

(Click on a photo to view it larger)

Threads used:

• Top: Wonderfil Silco (colour SCM 15, 40 wt, polyester?)
• Bobbin: Bobbinfil (white)

This little quilt (yes, it was quite small compared to some others I’ve done) took an age to quilt. why? Well, I started by quilting the diagonal lines, then when I’d nearly finished them, I realised that something wasn’t quite right with the bobbin tension and so I unpicked all those lines. Once I got the tension sorted, I decided instead to quilt the straight horizontal lines, but once that was finished, those diagonals still stood out (they were marked and I’d stitched over them, so there were marks and needle punch holes), so I redid the diagonals. I quite like the effect once I’d finished.

But what to do for the border? I decided to pull out some rulers I bought some months ago and give them a go. Except for my favourite ‘Line Tamer’ ruler, I haven’t had much joy with rulers — they seem to cause me more frustration than anything else. I’m probably too impatient 😉 That said, I’m attending a rulers class that my awesome dealer, Michelle, is running this coming Saturday, so maybe I’ll feel more kindly about rulers in future.

Meantime, here are my attempts at ruler work. The main arcs and the lower arcs are all done with rulers; I did the echoing by eyeballing the shapes of the arcs.

And yes, more time was taken as I had to go slow with the rulers, but also because I stitched the back on itself — twice! and had to unpick it… <grrr> I think this small quilt ended up taking about five hours to quilt, when I thought it would be maybe an hour…

(Click on a photo to view it larger)

Threads used:

• Top: Superior King Tut (‘Cairo’ colour #932 [blue, yellow, green and purple variegated thread], 40 wt, cotton)
• Bobbin: Bobbinfil (black)

I quilted this second bright eye-spy quilt at the Community Quilting Bee. As with the first one, it was such a bright quilt, that only a fluoro orange would do as the top quilting thread 😉

I quilted it with an all-over variation of the ‘open headband‘ motif — this time I squared off the points of the arcs.

(Click on a photo to view it larger)

Threads used:

• Top: Fil-Tec Glide (‘Neon Orange’ colour #90811, 40 wt, polyester)
• Bobbin: Wonderfil Invisifil (red, 100 wt, colour IF 202)