Rhonda Bracey: At Random

I had high hopes for this quilt. It was big and it had a rich backing fabric that led me to believe that the top would be as exotic. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as exotic as I’d hoped for. And the batting was a high-loft polyester wadding, which meant that this quilt was hard to handle as it kept wanting to ‘run away’ from me.

As a consequence of its sheer size and the thick polyester wadding, my first job was to stitch it down. Normally, basting pins are sufficient, but this one needed the ‘ESS’ touch (‘[stitch] Every Stinking Seam’ — attributable to Cindy Needham), so I stitched in the ditch around every block, and then within the blocks using a very lightweight (100 wt) thread in a matching beige. While I didn’t quite achieve ESS, I came close. I started using my Line Tamer ruler for the stitch in the ditch, but as some of the blocks only had short straight lengths, I discarded it and went for ‘eyeballing’ the straight lines.

Although I was tempted to do some quite detailed quilting in each block, time was against me (and I really didn’t like the ‘hand’ of the quilt with all that polyester wadding), so instead I decided to just quilt the sashing borders with a decorative orange thread, spiralling in the keystone blocks, and doing vertical and horizontal wavy lines between the spiral blocks.

I had to take the photos of this quilt inside as it was bucketing with rain outside and I was in a hurry to get this one packaged up and taken with me to Perth to be dropped at the Community Quilts coordinator’s house. So the photos are a little blurry.

(Click on a photo to view it larger)

Threads used:

• Top: Robison-Anton (40 wt, rayon, colour Dk Tex Oran #2469); Invisifil (100 wt, light tan/beige)
• Bobbin: Invisifil (100 wt, navy)

And then there are the quilts that are just so bright and, well, jolly! This was one of them. Who’d have thought that flouro lime green and bright pink would go together? But with the addition of black, they sure did.

But how to quilt it? I thought about emulating the paisley motif in the pink fabric, or doing just straight lines (a la modern quilts), but ended up opting for largish circles in a neon/fluoro lime green thread in the main top, then a sort of ‘stem and leaf’ motif in neon/fluoro pink in the borders, leaving the solid pink border empty of any quilting.

I had fun doing the circles, but the stem/leaf borders took much longer than I expected.

I also loved the Aboriginal design backing fabric on this quilt, and felt it was a bit lost there — it would make a good quilt in its own right.

(Click on a photo to view it larger)

Back:

Threads used:

• Top: Mettler Poly Sheen (40 wt polyester, colour 5940 [lime green]); Isacord (40 wt trilobal polyester, colour 1940 [pink])
• Bobbin: Bobbinfil (white)

A few of the quilts I get to quilt for the Community Quilts program are just weird, in my opinion — this one falls into that category. I have no idea what inspired Windham Fabrics to make this circus panel from the 19th century/early 20th century, or what inspired someone to buy it, or what/who inspired them to make a quilt with eight panels rolled straight off the bolt of this strange fabric!

I suspect this is an old panel, as the backing fabric also looked old and a dessicated carcass of a beetle feel out when I opened it up. Also, it had been hand basted and the thread used for the basting felt old too.

So, how to quilt it? There was so much going on in the panels that I decided to just outline the main features in a 100 wt almost-black thread. I wasn’t sure what — if anything — to do with the ‘sashing strips’ surrounding the panels and eventually decided to just stitch the cursive word ‘circus’ multiple times (in the same thread) to hold them down.

A very strange quilt…

(Click on a photo to view it larger)

If you look carefully, you might see the word ‘circus’ stitched in the black sashings/borders:

Threads used:

• Top: Wonderfil Invisifil (100 wt polyester?, colour IF 179)
• Bobbin: Wonderfil Invisifil (100 wt polyester?, colour IF 179)

I loved the colours in this quilt, and with the fish and the butterflies, I was always going to quilt it with a flowing motif. And to enhance the colours in the quilt, I used a bright neon/fluoro lime green top thread!

I started in the centre with big dipping waves across the quilt, echoing these waves (to a degree) from the centre out, gradually making the waves less steep by the edges.

Update: I found out after I’d done it that what I thought were fish were actually parrots!!!

(Click on a photo to view it larger)

Back:

Threads used:

• Top: Mettler Poly Sheen (40 wt polyester, colour 5940)
• Bobbin: Bobbinfil (white)