Rhonda Bracey: At Random

This was a BIG quilt — at a guess, it was about 50 x 80 inches. It took me about 6 hours to quilt.

Initially, I thought I’d outline the coloured shapes and echo that in the white, then do some other stuff with rulers. But after doing the first one of MANY coloured ‘diamonds’, I decided that would take way too long, so instead I decided to do an all-over, continuous line design in a cubed meander. It still took 6 hours; had I done what my first thought was, it would have taken well over 12 hours to quilt this quilt.

I ran out of the 1000 m spool of pale blue variegated cotton thread I was using so had to finish the edge blocks in a pale blue rayon thread. I had a hard time figuring out where one thread started and the other finished, so hopefully the recipient will never know 😉

I was pleased with my choice of all-over motif — I think it fits well with the ‘masculine’ nature of the pieced fabrics and the back. I suspect this is one of the quilts the ladies have made that will go to St Barts, a facility for the homeless.

(Click on a photo to view it larger)

Back:

Threads used:

• Top: Wonderfil Tutti variegated pale blue (cotton, 50 wt, colour TU210; Robison-Anton ‘Paris blue’ (rayon, 40 wt, colour 2283)
• Bobbin: Bobbinfil (white, 70 wt, cotton)

I wasn’t sure about this quilt — there was something about those bunnies that was scary! 😉 Maybe it was the clown colours or the upright ears, but these rabbits just didn’t seem very friendly.

Anyhoo… My job wasn’t to wonder about scary or friendly bunnies — it was to quilt the quilt that someone had spent hours making.

My first step was to outline and stabilise all the appliqued rabbit features in invisible thread. Once that was done, I just did a simple meandering stipple in a variegated pastel thread over all the other parts of the quilt, letting the bunnies take centre stage. I hadn’t seen or touched pique (?) fabric in YEARS, so it was quite nice handling the pale blue fabric.

(Click on a photo to view it larger)

Threads used:

• Top: Fil-Tec Harmony ‘Spring’ (variegated cotton [pink, yellow, blue, green pastels], 40 wt, colour 14062)
• Bobbin: Bobbinfil (white, 70 wt, cotton)

Whoopee! I’ve now quilted 100 quilts for the Community Quilts program. Others make the tops, yet others sandwich the tops, batting, and backing together and pin baste them ready for me to quilt, then when I’m finished the quilting (i.e. stitching the three layers together with some fancy threadwork ;-)), still more people sew on the binding before these quilts are donated to charitable organisations. I donate my time, my expertise, and my thread.

I wanted the 100th quilt to be a bit special, so I chose this stunning red, black, and white one from the most recent bundle. I decided to ‘custom’ quilt it, with different motifs in each block, different colours, various ruler work, etc. It took me about 12 hours to quilt this quilt from beginning to end.

I started by stitching in the ditch around all the blocks (what fun — NOT! — but it had to be done), then around all the centre pieces of each block to hold everything down and stabilise the quilt for quilting. Then I did all the stitching in red, followed by all the stitching in black, then finally all the white stitching, before finishing with a charcoal grey thread in the sashing strips and the large borders.

Deciding how to quilt each block was the hardest bit. Some designs immediately sprang  out, but others I agonised over for a while — I even read and reviewed two books while waiting for the inspiration to come for these blocks 😉 I was pleased with all the blocks, but some more than others. And if I did something similar again, I’d stabilise the borders with a light basting stitch fairly early on as the heavy stitching in the blocks meant that the borders got a bit puffy and unmanageable.

(Click on a photo to view it larger; note: it was a windy day when I took these photos AND I was using the camera on my new tablet, which means that some photos are not as crisp as I would’ve liked)

Borders and sashing — large and small spirals joined by a single centreline stitch:

Threads used:

• Top: Red: Robison-Anton ‘Tuxedo Red’ (rayon, 40 wt, colour 2420); Black: Robison-Anton ‘Jet Black’ (rayon, 40 wt, colour 2632); White: Fil-Tec Glide ‘White’ (trilobal polyester, 40 wt, colour 10000); Charcoal: Floriani (rayon?, 40 wt, colour PF488)
• Bobbin: Bobbinfil (white and black, 70 wt, cotton)

This quilt was very dark and sombre, so I sparked it up a little by stitching it with a variegated thread in blue, green, purple, and yellow. I used an all-over continuous line quilting design — the squared-off variation of the headband motif I use a lot.

There was only one problem with this quilt — I don’t think the navy backing fabric had been pre-washed, as I got all sorts of staining over my Sweet Sixteen table overlay. It is particularly bad where pins have lightly scratched the overlay as the staining is in those grooves. I’ve tried a couple of cleaning options with no effect as yet….

(Click on a photo to view it larger; note: photos not super clear — I’m still trying to get used to the camera on my new tablet)

Threads used:

• Top: Superior King Tut ‘Cairo’ (40 wt, cotton, colour #932)
• Bobbin: Bobbinfil (black, 70 wt, cotton)

I had to put my new ruler skills into practice, so I quilted this colourful quilt with wonky stars in a variegated pink/purple thread. After doing the plain blocks, I then did the same with the multi-coloured blocks, then added a little centre flower to each of the blocks to beat the puffiness and lumps into submission.

I sewed free motion stars in a light mauve thread in the border, and did a little bit of scallop work in the sashing border, with a little flame coming out of the dip.

(Click on a photo to view it larger)

Threads used:

• Top: Superior King Tut ‘Egyptian Princess’ (40 wt, cotton, colour #947); Isacord (40 wt, trilobal polyester, colour Fb 3040)
• Bobbin: Bobbinfil (white, 70 wt)

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)