This geometric disappearing 9-patch quilt cried out for geometric quilting, so that’s what I did. I did a square ‘stipple’ all over the main quilt top, then ‘skyscrapers’ in the borders (yes, I made up that name!).
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Even after working with it for some hours, I still couldn’t figure out the ‘theme’ of this quilt — the closest I could some to it was the sky, as it seemed to be the only element that linked the various blocks.
Anyhow, how to quilt it? As usual, I started by stitching in the ditch around all the blocks and appliqued pieces. In some blocks I followed the cloud pattern to stitch the sky; in others, I just did something more random.
I echo stitched about half an inch outside the blocks. In the wide checked border I stitched large ‘U’ shapes, alternating their height and repeating on the other side. For the striped border, I free-motion stitched lines about one inch apart (no rulers).
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Birdies! This BIG single-bed quilt was done in traditional heritage colours, with stylised birds appliqued into every alternate block. (It was so big, I had to hang it sideways on the clothes line to take a picture of it without it falling onto the ground.)
I started by stitching in the ditch around all the blocks, sashing strips, and borders. Then around the appliqued birds.
I then filled the background of each bird block with McTavishing, and stitched cathedral windows in the other 9-patch blocks. I left the sashing strips unstitched, but added a small cathedral window in each cornerstone.
In the green border I followed the pattern of the fabric and free-motion stitched through the centres of the little flowers, giving an overall diagonal effect.
Because the outer border was so dark, I just did a large meandering stipple in it to hold the layers together.
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This was a HUGE scrappy quit, done in a fairly traditional style. In fact, I think a lot of the top was hand stitched. What an effort!
How to quilt it? Well, the obvious first step was to stitch in the ditch around ALL the blocks and borders, and the coloured fabrics in those blocks. This took a few hours, even with my favourite Line Tamer ruler.
I decided to leave the coloured blocks unstitched, except for the ditch stitching, so they’d ‘pop’. In the white space, I echo quilted about a half inch from the seams, then free-motion stitched large ribbon candy in the remaining spaces.
I did a similar treatment in the final white borders, leaving the inner white border and the coloured border unstitched (except for stitch in the ditch).
In total, this quilt took about 6 hours to quilt on my Handi Quilter Sweet Sixteen. It was big!
One of the photos below shows the quilting in progress — the area on the left is fully quilted; the area on the right is just pinned ready for stitching. You can see what a difference quilting makes.
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There were lots of very busy fabric in this quilt, and some very slippery non-cotton ones (particularly the border fabric). I started by stitching in the ditch around all the blocks and borders.
How to quilt it? The busy-ness of the fabrics dictated something simple and all-over. So I went back to a design that I have a lot of ‘muscle memory’ for — open headbands.
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I think is the last of three very similar quilts: #201 and #209 were the earlier ones.
So I did mostly the same quilting on it — echo stitching around all the applique motifs (after stitching in the ditch around the blocks and the applique pieces, of course).
I left the sashing strips unstitched, and in the larger border I free-motion bubbles/pebbles of various sizes to emulate the fabric.
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Threads used:
This bright quilt was a larger version of Quilt #201, but essentially the same. So I did mostly the same quilting on it — echo stitching around all the applique motifs (after stitching in the ditch around the blocks and the applique pieces, of course).
In the sashing strips, I stitched a straight diagonal line across each square. And in the aqua border I free-motion stitched elongated U’s of various lengths, keeping them about a half-inch wide.
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This unusual quilt seemed to be a mish-mash of disparate blocks — I couldn’t see the underlying theme, if there was one. But the colours brought it together, especially the large chunky borders.
I started by stitching in the ditch (purple thread) around all the blocks, sashing strips, applique motifs, and large borders. I left the black borders unstitched.
In each block I quilted something different — pebbles/bubbles around the spotted dog, sun rays and grass in the sun block, straight lines in the hexagonal strip block, spirals in the ‘sort of’ log cabin block, squared stippling in the block with the dice, and half flowers and straight lines in the block with the crossover squares.
For the borders, I decided to just go plain and so stitched straight echo lines (in a bright lipstick pink) about 1 inch away from the seams and about 3 inches out from that stitching line.
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Threads used:
This small scrappy quilt was full of very busy fabrics, many of which seemed quite old. So simple quilting was called for.
I started by stitching in the ditch around all the blocks, sashing strips, and borders. Then I free-motion stitched a simple elongated ‘U’ shape in each block, alternating side-to-side and up-and-down, creating a checkerboard effect.
I repeated the ‘U’ shape at a smaller scale in the borders.
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Threads used:
This quite traditional quilt offered me a challenge — how to quilt it? I thought about all over designs, feathers, spirals etc. But nothing grabbed me as being suitable. Instead, I opted for using my Line Tamer ruler and stitching 8-pointed stars in the coloured parts of the blocks, and slightly different 8-pointed stars in the white space (after stitching in the ditch around all the stars in the blocks and flying geese…).
For the flying geese, I echo stitched half an inch out from the seam lines. And in the border, I stitched a straight line half an inch from the seam, then free-motion stitched (i.e. no ruler) the zigzag peaks and valleys. I quite liked the zigzag effect and can see myself using that motif again soon — it’s perfect for smallish borders!
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Rhonda Bracey: At Random 
