Rhonda Bracey: At Random

For this small scrappy quilt, I decided to let the ‘on point’ squares pop by only stitching in the white space. I started by stitching in the ditch around all the squares and the borders, then did elongated curved ‘S’ shapes up and down and across to create the illusion of flowers or cathedral windows in the white space. I left the two inner borders unstitched, and did a large meandering stipple in the outer border.

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Back:

Threads used:

• Top: Fil-tec Glide ‘Cream’ (40 wt, trilobal polyester, colour 20001)
• Bottom: Fil-Tec Magna Glide Classic pre-wound bobbin (light tan)

I decided to follow the geometric nature of this quilt made from some lovely batiks and stitched an all-over design of overlapping squares and rectangles. I didn’t use rulers, so not a single line is straight, even though they all look it from a distance.

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Back:

Threads used:

• Top: Isacord (40 wt, trilobal polyester, colour FB3040)
• Bottom: Fil-Tec Magna Glide Classic pre-wound bobbin (white)

How to quilt this quilt? While I decided, I stitched in the ditch along all the zigzag lines for the verticals of the ‘hexagons’ created from the half strips. Then, because the quilt top design was so geometric, I decided to quilt circles. But they aren’t real circles — in fact, not one would meet the criteria for a real circle, but they give the illusion of circles.

I didn’t use any rulers for the circles — instead, I did very curved ‘S’ shapes coming close the centre point of each edge, then crossing in the middle of a join to do the other side of the ‘S’ on the other side of each hexagon, all the way to the top edge, then back down. If you look closely at the stitching you’ll see how I did that. It was pretty quick, and HOURS quicker than using rulers! The effect was still the same, and as this quilt isn’t for a show, these simple circles fitted the bill perfectly.

And I liked how the stitch-in-the-ditch stitching set off the circles, too.

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Back:

Threads used:

• Top: Superior Rainbows (40 wt, trilobal polyester, colour 818)
• Bottom: Fil-Tec Magna Glide Classic pre-wound bobbin (white)

The busy-ness of this big scrappy quilt didn’t lend itself to custom quilting, so I quilted it with a single-line, all-over ‘open headband‘ motif using a variegated thread.

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Back:

Threads used:

• Top: Fil-Tec Harmony ‘Autumn’ (40 wt, cotton, colour 14081)
• Bottom: Fil-Tec Magna Glide Classic pre-wound bobbin (light tan)

I liked the Asiatic (Japanese?) feel to this red, white, and blue quilt. But how to quilt it? I started by stitching in the ditch along the diagonals. Then stitched straight lines around the inner white squares, with arcs at each corner, thus creating little flower shapes.

For the large border, I emulated the fabric by stitching flames coming out from the inner blue border.

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Back:

Threads used:

• Top: Fil-Tec Glide ‘Cardinal’ (40 wt, trilobal polyester, colour 70001); Isacord (40 wt, trilobal polyester, colour A3941/Fb4133 [dark dusky blue])
• Bottom: Fil-Tec Magna Glide Classic pre-wound bobbin (red)

I know these quilts are a great way to use up scraps, but they can be the devil to quilt, especially if the person making the top hasn’t flattened out the 8-way joins in the middle of each ‘circle’. The big bump of fabric can break a needle and throw out your timing really easily (a $100 repair at least). Fortunately, the joins on this one weren’t too bad.

I did a large all-over meandering stipple so that I could deliberately avoid the 8-way joins, and because the colour etc. were so busy no-one would be likely to notice the quilting anyway!

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Threads used:

• Top: Floriani (40 wt, rayon, colour PF546)
• Bottom: Fil-Tec Magna Glide Classic pre-wound bobbin (light tan)

What a bright quilt this was! To highlight the sunny yellow, I did all the quilting with yellow thread.

For the main body of the quilt I did half arcs/semicircles. I needed to get my muscle memory back after not quilting for 6 weeks or so and this was the perfect motif for that.

Other than stitching in the ditch, I left the black border unstitched, and just did piano keys in the coloured border strips.

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Threads used:

• Top: Floriani (40 wt, rayon, colour PF546)
• Bottom: Fil-Tec Magna Glide Classic pre-wound bobbin (light tan)

This big quilt took me a long time to quilt, both in actual hours (about 10) and over time. I started it a few days before I had shoulder surgery (19 Dec 2015), getting all the stitching in the ditch done. Then I couldn’t quilt for a couple of weeks, then the weekend I set myself to get back to it we evacuated the house because of the threat of a major bushfire, then other stuff got in the way. Finally, I got back to it this weekend and finished it!

To make the stars ‘pop’, I stitched diamond shapes in the white space between them, then filled the white background around each star with some elongated ‘n’ and ‘u’ shapes, which made both the stars and the diamonds ‘pop’. All that stitching created an interesting effect on the back, too. I left the borders unstitched.

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Back:

Threads used:

• Top: Fil-Tec Glide ‘White’ (40 wt, trilobal polyester, colour 10000)
• Bottom: Fil-Tec Magna Glide Classic pre-wound bobbin (white)

How to quilt this quilt? I thought of doing an overall motif, but those straight strips kept calling me 😉 Instead, I decided to do straight lines extending past the straight strips in both vertical and horizontal directions.

The border fabric was so ‘busy’ that a large stipple was all that was necessary to stitch the layers together.

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Threads used:

• Top: Robison-Anton ‘Raspberry’ (40 wt, rayon, colour 2426)
• Bottom: Fil-Tec Magna Glide Classic pre-wound bobbin (dark gray)

This quilt had bias edges on the diamond shapes that needed to be dealt with as they were causing quite a bit of puffing as they were stretching out of shape.

I started by stitching in the ditch around all the blocks, borders, and stars. Then I echo stitched (in red) inside each of the diamonds, filling every alternate diamond with ribbon candy and the others with some more ruler work. All this stitching was successful in stopping the puffiness caused by the bias fabric.

I finished off with a wonky star in the centre square and some basic stippling in black backgrounds around each star, leaving the sashing strips and borders unstitched.

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Threads used:

• Top: Robison-Anton ‘Tuxedo Red’ (40 wt, rayon, colour 2420); black
• Bottom: Fil-Tec Magna Glide Classic pre-wound bobbin (black)