Rhonda Bracey: At Random

Ooo! A dramatic yellow, black and white quilt top! How to quilt it??? There were some floral and leaf fabrics in there, as well as geometrics. I immediately dismissed the idea of a floral or curly leaf motif and went for geometrics. Should I just do straight line ruler work a la modern quilts, or something else?

I still wanted to do something similar to quilting on modern quilts but not plain lines, so I opted for a straight line stipple that crossed to form rectangles and ‘sort of’ squares. No rulers or markings — I just eyeballed it and went for it, starting in the centre and working my way out.

This is one of those all-over, edge-to-edge, single line quilting motifs that I love doing (I get into a zen zone), and I thought it worked well on this quilt.

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Threads used:

• Top: Isacord 40 wt trilobal polyester (I don’t have the empty thread spool, so can’t give the colour, but it was sort of a mango yellow)
• Bobbin: Bobbinfil (white)

This was a BIG quilt. I didn’t realise how big until I started quilting it. Instead of doing an all-over design, it decided to feature feathers in the light blocks, leaves and curls in the green areas, more feathers in the light border, and curls in the other border. As a result, this quilt took well over 6 hours to quilt. Had I stuck with an all-over design, it might have taken less than half the time. But I was happy I spent the extra time on it, as I think the quilting complements the quilt well.

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Back:

Threads used:

• Top: Fil-Tec Glide ‘Sea Foam’ (40 wt, trilobal polyester, colour #97494)
• Bobbin: Bobbinfil (white)

This one was very similar to Community Quilt #68, so I quilted it in the same way, using an all-over flame design in a bright orange for the main top, and just emphasising the large white dot paths in the border in black.

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Threads used:

• Top: Fil-Tec Glide ‘Neon Orange’ (40 wt, trilobal polyester, colour #90811), and a plain black rayon from Robison-Anton
• Bobbin: Gutermann Skala U121 240 (black)

What a cheery quilt this was! Bright colours, complemented by the white. I suspect a young girl/teenager will love it. In keeping with the bright cheerful colours, I quilted it with an all-over design variation on ‘open headbands‘, in a bright fluoro orange thread.

(Click on a photo to view it larger)

Threads used:

• Top: Fil-Tec Glide ‘Neon Orange’ (40 wt, trilobal polyester, colour #90811)
• Bobbin: Bobbinfil (white)

Another fun and bright quilt for a child, this time featuring characters from the movie ‘Cars’, and fabrics to match. As there was a flame motif on one of the fabrics, I decided to quilt the main top in bright orange flames.

I really like the large border fabric and only quilted black outlines around the heaviest of the white dotted lines — just enough to hold the layers together.

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Back

Threads used:

• Top: Fil-Tec Glide ‘Neon Orange’ (40 wt, trilobal polyester, colour #90811), and a plain black rayon from Robison-Anton
• Bobbin: Wonderfil Deco-Bob (80 wt, colour #DB 205 [deep red])

What a bright eye-spy quilt this was! Whichever kid gets it will have hours of fun identifying all the animals, characters, etc. on it. Of course, being so bright and ‘busy’, and as it will likely be well loved by a child, I decided to keep the quilting design to a basic all-over ‘open headband‘ motif, but in a matching bright fluoro orange thread!

Even the backing fabric was bright — red, with the names of animals printed on it.

Click on a photo to view it larger.

Threads used:

• Top: Fil-Tec Glide ‘Neon Orange’ (40 wt, trilobal polyester, colour #90811)
• Bobbin: Wonderfil Deco-Bob (80 wt, colour #DB 205 [deep red])