Rhonda Bracey: At Random

What gorgeous colours and fabrics were in this quilt! All those rich reds, and I think some of the fabrics were heavy silks too. The backing fabric was in a deep navy/black with a Kokopelli symbol. Unfortunately, the reds just don’t come out well in the photsos.

For this quilt, I decided to do an all over design using a rich red thread. I wanted to capture the feel of the grasses in one of the fabrics, so did a sort of grassy motif, which was really just a very open version of the open headbands motif I use a lot.

(Click on a photo to view it larger)

Threads used:

• Top: Floriani embroidery thread (40 wt rayon, colour PF188)
• Bobbin: Wonderfil Invisifil (red, 100 wt, colour IF 202)

I didn’t particularly like this quilt (non-one says I have to like them!), though the child who gets it will probably love it to death as there’s a lot going on in each block. It’s a perfect ‘I spy’ quilt.

As the quilt fabrics were so busy, I just did an all-over squared off ‘open headband’ motif. However, I had a great deal of difficulty in keeping this quilt from puckering. My tension was fine — the problem was that the quilt wasn’t a quilt sandwich with proper batting inside it. The quilt top had been laid directly onto the backing fabric, which was a polar fleece. It was as a slippery as anything on my quilting machine table, and it puckered as I stitched.

The one consolation is that the puckering is reasonably even, so perhaps the recipient will think that’s how it’s meant to be 😉

(Click on a photo to view it larger)

Threads used:

• Top: Madeira rayon (aqua blue)
• Bobbin: Wonderfil Invisifil (lime green, 100 wt, colour IF 702)

This was such a cute quilt! All those spotted owls… The Community Quilt Coordinator gave it to me hoping I’d do a great job on it — I hope it lives up to your expectations, Gwen 😉

This quilt took me 8+ hours to quilt. First I stitched ESS (‘every stinking seam’ [from Cindy Needham]) in invisible thread, and I mean EVERY stinking seam… including around all the applique pieces of each owl. Then I used a variegated green thread to stitch a different filler motif in each block. I quite like how the different stitches give different personalities to the owls — the black one, for example, looks like he’s scared.

In keeping with the owl theme, I stitched really long bird feathers from the centre of each border out to the corners. I tried something different for these feathers — I put TWO different threads in the top, using a size 18 needle to make sure they had enough room to pass through. I thought I’d get a lot of breakage or shredding, but I got very little. The combination of the fluoro orange and the yellow thread came out a really nice yellow orangey colour.

I was quite pleased with how the whole quilt turned out. There’s a cute frog fabric on the back too 😉

(Click on a photo to view it larger)

Threads used:

• Top: Fil-Tec ‘Affinity’ (‘Chartru’, colour #60156, 40 wt, variegated polyester); Fil-Tec ‘Glide’ (‘Neon Orange’, colour #90811, 40 wt, polyester); Fil-Tec ‘Glide’ (‘Marigold’, colour #80130, 40 wt, polyester)
• Bobbin: Wonderfil Invisifil (100 wt, lime green, colour IF 702)

I started this one at the ‘sit and sew’ stations at QuiltWest two weekends ago, and finished it last weekend. I’ve been super busy at work, so it’s taken all week to get the photos taken and posted.

Just a simple heart and loop motif for this one, to match the blue appliqued hearts. All stitched in a white cotton thread (I think I use white Bobbinfil on the top and bottom).

This pretty quilt was a real challenge. The first challenge was how to quilt it, the second was how to deal with some of the very bulky 3D objects, and the third challenge was what to do about the unfortunate rust-type staining on some of the blocks.

Before I stitched any of the main designs, I stitched in the ditch with invisible thread around EVERY single applique motif. Yes, there were a lot… This took several hours.

I tried removing the worst stain with some dishwashing liquid, but while that dulled the stain a little, it didn’t take it out. I sure wasn’t going to wash this quilt as there were a LOT of red fabrics in it and also red thread used for hand embroidery — if only one of those reds ran, I’d be in a worse situation than when I started. So I decided to leave the stains and hope that someone else has a good idea on how to deal with them, or that no-one else will notice them 😉

The very bulky 3D objects (especially the chrysanthemums in the centre block) were hard to get around and I got my open-toe hopping foot caught in them a couple of times, so, where I could, I backed into these objects to avoid creating havoc.

But the big challenge was how to quilt this quilt. The blocks were really big (18″ square) and there was a lot of white space surrounding each of the hand-appliqued motifs. I decided on a circle around each, but puzzled over what circular household object I had that was big enough for me to make a circle template. Nothing… So I sent my brain further afield to the shed where I remembered that we had a rock/soil sieve that was large and circular. Off to the shed… Yep — that worked! I pulled apart a 30-pack Diet Coke carton and drew two circles on it with a Sharpie — one for the larger circle at the top of the sieve (nearly 16″ diameter) and the other for the smaller base of the sieve (~13″ diameter). I then cut the templates out of the cardboard and laid them over the motifs. Initially I was going to use the larger one, but decided on the smaller one as I could get an under/over effect with it on almost all the applique designs; with the larger one, almost every design was going to be inside the circle.

I then used an ordinary 2B pencil to lightly trace around the template on each motif — light enough to see the pencil lines when I was stitching, but not enough for them to show once stitched. Then I used an off-white thread to stitch each circle along the marked lines. Then I braved ‘winging’ it by eyeballing a stitching line 1/4″ outside the main circle, thus creating a circular border. Some of the lines were a little wobbly, but I was pretty pleased with them overall.

Next came the decisions about how to quilt inside each circle — or whether to leave the insides unstitched and only stitch the areas outside the circles. I decided on stitching inside the circles, and while I initially thought I’d quilt outside the circles too, I decided not to once I’d quilted the insides, as I thought it would be overkill. Of course, each motif was different — should I use the same quilting stitch inside every circle, or vary it according to the design of the motif?

The end results are below. I’m pretty please with how they turned out, but they took much longer than I thought they would — I guess I spent about eight to twelve hours quilting all the blocks, in addition to the time spent stitching in the ditch.

Finally, what to do with the red sashing and the borders… I went with something very simple here so as to not draw the eye away from the centres of each block, and just did a straight line box around each block, some 1/2″ inside the block (in off-white), stitch-in-the-ditch at each seam (also in off-white), and 1/2″ outside the block (in red thread).

(Click on a photo to view each block in detail)

Threads used:

• Top: Off-white: Fil-Tec Glide (40 wt, trilobal polyester, colour ‘Linen’ #10WG1); Red: Fil-Tec Glide (40 wt, trilobal polyester, colour ‘Cardinal’ #70001); Green (for the holly stems): Robison-Anton (40 wt, rayon, colour ‘Evergreen’ #2315)
• Bobbin: Invisifil (100 wt, beige)

Not my colours, not my favourite design, but hey — when you do community quilts, you get to quilt what’s been given to you 😉 And that’s part of the fun of the challenge!

For this one, I decided to use a matching variegated dark blue thread so that it disappeared into the quilt and didn’t try to overpower it. I also used a squared off ‘open headband‘ motif because I wanted to add some curves to the very geometric quilt design, but flowers etc. weren’t going to work for this fairly dark and masculine quilt.

(Click on a photo to view it larger)

Back:

Threads used:

• Top: Wonderfil Tutti (50 wt, Egyptian cotton, colour TU24
• Bobbin: Invisifil (100 wt, navy)

What a bright, fun quilt! Some child will love this one as it’s full of jungle animals and other animals, and has such gorgeous bright colours.

Deciding on a all-over leaf quilt design was pretty easy with that jungle theme going on… and deciding on a bright fluoro lime green was easy too.

Unfortunately, it was quite a dull day when I took the photos, so they’re a little washed out.

(Click on a photo to view it larger)

Back:

Threads used:

• Top: Isacord (40 wt, trilobal polyester, colour #6010)
• Bobbin: Bobbinfil (white)